


Soulmates

by thomasjeffersonsmacaroni



Series: The Other 51 [37]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Camp NaNoWriMo April 2017, F/M, Soulmates, fun fact i affectionately referred to this as reylowrimo while planning it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-11 06:06:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 50,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10457133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni/pseuds/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni
Summary: Rey and Ben keep meeting, in lifetime after lifetime.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Soulmates by thomasjeffersonsmacaroni, used for her Camp NaNoWriMo project, affectionately referred to as ReyloWriMo. Here's a couple things you need to know:  
> 1\. Each chapter is a separate universe, but with the same ship, like Rey and Ben are being reincarnated into these situations and plots. Not necessarily in chronological order.  
> 2\. One chapter a day, each chapter/short story 1,667 words at least to fit the Camp NaNoWriMo requirements. If a chapter has less words than the minimum, a different one will have more.  
> 3\. All other projects are being put on hold for this thing. They will be resumed in May when Camp NaNo is over.  
> 4\. I've never personally gotten hate for shipping Reylo, and I hope to God I don't. But if an anti stumbles upon this fic and is tempted to send me hate, please remember:  
> a. I am not a mindless droid churning out fic. I am a fifteen year old girl behind the screen. Think before you speak, please.  
> b. If you have genuine constructive criticism, I take it with open arms. But I don't take "HURR DURR REYLO IS BAD GO KILL YOURSELF"  
> c. Have a great day :)  
> Cool? Cool. Now let's do this.

It was barely a couple of hours into Rey’s journey, and already she was slumping with exhaustion.

Yes, she was excited to finally be able to see her friends back in the States, so excited that she had been thinking about it for weeks. Yes, she had drank twice her usual amount of coffee this morning, and her entire body was shaking with hyperness. But she had been sitting in the airport after her first flight, with a dead phone, for what felt like forever, and her flight was apparently now delayed, so she would have to wait some more.

_Jesus Christ._ She would text Finn to complain if she could.

 

After about an hour, judging by the clock on the wall, Rey had grown tired of sitting idle, and hungry, too. So she decided to take her bags and her money and take a trip around the airport, maybe even stop by the pizzeria that she had passed on the first of these walks and buy a slice or two.

People were milling around everywhere, some in a hurry, some taking their time, all looking just as bored as she felt. She supposed that this was the adult life, and especially the life of an adult who needed to be everywhere at the same time.

In about half an hour, Rey managed to walk around the entire four-story airport, and still her flight had not yet been called. Gritting her teeth in frustration, she walked to a map, found the pizza place, and took the elevator to it.

Surprisingly - or, at least, surprisingly based on how much she knew Americans loved pizza - it was almost entirely empty. Just a couple of cashiers manning the desks, a young-looking girl in the corner typing something out on a laptop, eyebrows furrowed in frustration and confusion, and a man with dark hair reading a book.

"Two slices of cheese pizza and a glass of Coca-Cola, no ice, please," Rey said to the cashier.

"Coming right up, ma'am. Have a seat while you wait."

Rey pulled out a book and sat down at a table to read it. Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder. When she looked up, she realized that it was the dark-haired man, one finger marking his place in his own book.

"That's a good book," he said. "I'm actually reading the same one right now, believe it or not. What part are you on?"

"I'm actually just starting it. I picked it up at the airport bookstore. Don't spoil it, please. You seem like you're at the end of it."

"I am. But I won't spoil it. I'm not a monster."

Rey laughed. "I see you don't dog-ear the pages, either. You're all right in my book."

"Pun intended?" the man asked, grinning.

Rey looked at him in confusion before realizing and groaning. "No, pun not intended. I'm Rey, by the way. Rey Kenobi."

"Ben Solo. So, what brings _you_ here to this pizzeria?"

"What do you mean? It's just a pizzeria. I was hungry."

Ben shook his head. "I'm a businessman. I pass through this airport a lot. _No one_ goes here. That's why I do. I like being alone."

"And we like keeping our business," the cashier called.

Rey shrugged. "I don't even live in the country. I don't understand why people wouldn't want to go here. It's a perfectly good pizzeria. Anyway, the reason I'm at the airport is because I'm visiting my friends. They don't actually live in New York, they live in Texas, I'm just taking a connecting flight. But it's fucking _delayed! Ugh!"_

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Ben held out a hand. "I'm sorry about your flight, though. Delayed flights suck ass. I've had them more times than I can count."

"Is your flight delayed right now?"

"Actually, no. But there's a long period of time between my first flight and my next one, and I've toured New York like every goddamn time I've been here, so I decided to just spend some time chilling here. Unlike poor Mer over there. She's writing her econ essay, and she's running into a lot of problems."

Mer looked across the room at Rey and Ben. "It's due when I get back from my vacation, but I was too busy visiting my girlfriend that I completely forgot to do it. Ben, why am I so dumb?"

"You're not dumb," Rey said. "I took a couple of econ courses in college. Maybe I can help?"

Mer shrugged. "You can try. Honestly, I'll take all the help I can get at this point. But keep in mind that even Mr. Business over there didn't understand it, so..."

Rey shook her head. "Then I probably won't be able to, either. But he did try?"

"He did try," said Ben. "But Mer's college experience was apparently _very_ different from my own. I have no idea what it is."

"Your pizza's ready," the cashier told Rey. She swooped forward and picked it up, then went back to her table, to which Ben had apparently moved in her absence.

"So, Rey," said Ben, "you're from England? What part?"

"London. Westminster, to be exact. What about you?"

"Fontana, California. But I travel so much for my job that I barely spend any time there. It makes me sad, though. I wish I could visit my mother."

"I see what you mean," said Rey. "I never knew my real parents, actually. Only my foster parents."

"And I never knew my father. Only my mother." He held out a hand, and Rey shook it.

"So what do you like to do for fun?" she asked somewhat awkwardly, because how exactly do you begin talking about such casual things after you just came together in solidarity over not knowing your parents?

"I like to read, obviously. And play video games with my friends."

"Video games?" Rey raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"Yeah. I know people look at businessmen and they think, 'Oh, this person can't live the same life as I do, not at all!' But yeah, I love playing Overwatch after a long day at work to unwind. Do you like video games at all?"

"Not really, honestly. I play, like, Animal Crossing, but that's about it. I'm a mechanic, so you would expect me to love the technical aspect of video games, but honestly, that sort of lifestyle isn't for me."

"A mechanic." Ben looked at her and smiled. "That's cool. You seemed like the type. Logical, practical..."

Rey grinned. "I'm a good one, if I say so myself. I have good ratings. Look up 'Kenobi's Auto Shop' if you don't believe me."

"Why wouldn't I -"

They were interrupted by a loudspeaker announcement.

_"Flight 271-B will begin boarding in ten minutes."_

"Oh, shit, that's me," said Rey. "I have to go now."

She grabbed her things and moved to stand up, but Ben held out a hand to stop her.

"What?"

"Can I walk with you? You know, say goodbye?"

"Of course."

He put his book in his bag and walked next to her in silence towards the gate. From her repeated walks around the airport, she knew the way by heart.

"Well, good luck with your business," she said once they were at the gate, and she stopped and turned around to look at him. "I know it's something you do every day, but..."

"And good luck with your mechanics. And have fun with your friends."

"Finish your book."

"And you finish yours."

"Call your mom! I'm sure she misses you!"

"Talk to your foster parents!"

"Wish Mer luck with her essay!"

"Have a safe flight!"

_"Flight 271-B will finish boarding in two minutes."_

"Okay, I really have to go now," said Rey. "It was nice meeting you, Ben Solo."

As she was about to turn around and leave, he held out a hand to stop her again.

"What? What is it?"

"Can I give you my number? So you can add it to your contacts and maybe call me sometime? I really liked you, and I would hate to lose you and never talk to you again. I mean, it's okay if you don't want to, but..."

"Yeah, sure!" Rey exclaimed, surprised by her own enthusiasm. "Just write it down on a sheet of paper-" she pulled a napkin out of her pocket and a pen out of her backpack "-and I'll add it to my contacts and text you on the plane."

Sticking his tongue out ever so slightly - he looked so beautiful when he did that, how had Rey never noticed it before? - he scribbled a series of numbers on the napkin in messy but readable ink. Rey stuffed it in her pocket with a "thank you," smiled and waved, and then rushed up to the ticket line to get herself checked in.

"Rey Kenobi," she said, holding out her ticket and barely seeing the security guard's confusion.

"Ma'am, this is a napkin with writing on it. Is this a joke?"

"Oh, sorry. Here it is." Holding the napkin with the number in one hand, she fumbled for her ticket with the other. She was suddenly jittery again. She had no idea why.

"All right, ma'am, you're good to go. Just pass through those gates and find your seat."

_I know how to get on a plane,_ Rey was tempted to say. But then she shook her head. He had probably just seen how tired she was from her previous flight. Nothing more.

She stepped through the doors, holding out a hand in a final goodbye to Ben, and walked through the long hallway. Then, she made the tiny step from the airport and onto the plane to Texas.

And in that moment, disaster struck.

Her hand slipped, probably because of how much it was shaking from exhaustion. And the napkin with Ben's number, which she had still been holding in her hand, slipped and flew away, blown by the wind somewhere off into the distance.

Rey was numb with shock. But all she could think about is that she would never meet Ben again.

"Ma'am, you're holding up the line," a voice said behind her.

So she stepped forward. To her credit, she didn't cry until she reached her seat and put her bags in the overhead.


	2. Chapter 2

"Ben! It's almost time for your lessons!"

Prince Ben Solo groaned as he opened his eyes and awoke. Today was one of the mornings when he especially didn't want to wake up, but he knew that he would have to, because otherwise the servant would walk into his room and shake him. And then she would discover his biggest secret.

Rey.

"Rey," he whispered, nudging her awake. "Rey, I'm sorry, love, but you have to leave now. See you tonight again?"

Rey didn't wake up carefully. She was a messy lump of beauty in the mornings, almost like a frustrated little kitten. She was just like their relationship, Ben considered as he leaned forward and kissed her on the nose. A messy lump of beauty.

"Rey," he whispered again. "C'mon."

"Ben!" the servant called again. This seemed to startle Rey awake at last, and she looked a bit confused as she looked into his eyes.

"I have to leave again, don't I?" she murmured sadly.

"Yes. I'm sorry, love. I would keep you around if I could. But you know I can't."

Rey sighed. "You know the neighbor boy's been flirtin' with me? He's handsome, and his father owns a big, big farm behind his house. If I marry him, it'll be easier for my family. They'll be able to survive."

"Do what you must, Rey," said Ben. "You know it's not my fault that we can't get married? I asked my mother if she would ever let me marry a commoner - completely hypothetically - and she almost whooped my ass into the stars. Trust me, if I could I would, but...I'm not forcing you to say. I just want you to know that."

"I do know that," she sighed. "But I can't stop this, damn it. I love you."

"I love you, too. See you again tonight?"

"See you again tonight."

"Ben? I'm coming up."

"Coming!"

He kissed Rey one last time, deep and slow, and then he watched her run away through the secret passage in his room. Then he put his princely robes on over his nakedness, ran a brush through his messy hair, and began walking down to the breakfast room.

His mother was sitting there, as was his father and a couple of the political advisors. That was new. Usually King and Queen Han and Leia Solo were off doing governing duties, already having eaten breakfast hours before him.

"Mother. Father. Honorary Advisors. Good morning."

"Good morning, Ben," said Queen Leia. "I bet you're wondering why we're here. Let us explain. Get your food and have a seat."

Ben's heart pumped so fast that he could hear it. Did they know about him and Rey? Were they going to punish him, perhaps even kill her for taking advantage of a prince? He grabbed some eggs and bacon, hands shaking with guilt as he thought about how he never should have started any of this.

Why, why, _why_ had he approached her that time during the royal parade? Maybe if he hadn't asked her for her name, maybe if they hadn't had that secret meeting in the castle park, if they hadn't kissed under the moonlight right next to their reflections in the capital pond, then none of this would be happening right now.

_It's going to be okay,_ he thought to himself, breathing in and out as he returned with his food and a glass of milk to the table. _It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be-_

"Ben, we wanted to tell you that we're making an alliance with a neighboring kingdom. You remember the Greyhawks of Cantermound, right?"

He did, and he also remembered their daughter Emilia, about his age, with dark hair and glimmering eyes. He had loved her, once, before he had met the commoner Rey.

"They have recently extended an offer of alliance. And we have decided that the way it is going to be secured is through your marriage with their daughter."

_No. No. No._

"I expect that this will be all right with you?"

He should have known that this would happen eventually. After all, he was the only Solo heir, and it was his job to find a wife so that she could bear little Solo princes and princesses.

_He should never have loved Rey._

There was no way to protest this without revealing his affair. So instead of doing or saying anything, he nodded meekly, barely managing to keep the tears out of his eyes before he made it back to his room to put on proper clothes. And it was only when he sat at his desk, answering letters to the royal family, that the tears came in a rush, pooling in his eyes and staining his hardwood desk.

He could run away, yes. Run away with Rey and use a fake name and get married. He would give up everything that he owned, all of his royal clothes and jewelry and money, for her. For a solid minute, he actually considered the idea, imagining what it would be like living with the love of his life.

But then he shook his head. He would be found, and when he was, the consequences would be severe, and they would be more on Rey than on him. He couldn't allow that.

Break it off with her, then? Explain to her at night that he couldn't see her anymore, that he was being forced to marry someone else and therefore he couldn't talk to her anymore? But how could he do that, after months and months of nightly conversations that made the bags under his eyes so black that he grew used to only five hours or so of sleep?

Or keep it going, and hope that everything would be resolved by itself. That was perhaps the worst option of all.

But in the end, it was the one that Ben chose.

Rey came to him that night, just like she always did, surrendering to his touch and to his gaze. She was so beautiful, and he loved her so much. She didn't seem to notice how drained he was by the recent news, or if she did, she purposely pretended not to.

"I love you, Rey," he whispered in her ear, lying in bed, embracing her so tightly that he never wanted to let go.

"I know."

"Huh? You _know?"_

"I do," Rey giggled. "I do by how you always see me, I do by how you care about how happy I am, I do by how you always make sure to tell me. Every night you tell me, in one way or another. And you remember what I like and what I hate. I bet you could name three things I like and three things I hate right now."

She couldn't count up to more than three. That was what hurt Ben the most as he thought about exactly what to say.

"Um, you hate waking up in the mornings, not having enough food to eat, and when people think that you're any less than them because you're a woman."

"I could kick your ass right now," she murmured, eyes already closing with tiredness.

"And you like flowers, long walks through the city square...and me."

"I don't like you. I _love_ you."

"And I love you." But by that point she was already asleep.

 

She came every night. And in the day, ever since the Greyhawks had arrived, Ben talked to them and made negotiations, but he especially avoided seeing Emilia unless he absolutely had to. She knew how much he had loved her once, and he didn't want to betray the fact that his heart belonged to another now.

Every night when he heard the knock on the door of the secret passageway and opened it, Ben delayed telling Rey about his engagement. It wasn't until the night before the big day, when she came in and saw his robes laid out on his desk chair, that she finally thought to ask.

"So, what's the big occasion, Ben?" she asked him, gesturing with one hand at the purple fabric.

"Rey...I know I should have told you earlier, but I'm actually engaged. I was forced into an arranged marriage with Princess Emilia Greyhawk of Cantermound, and we're going to get married tomorrow. I don't love her, I promise. I only love you. I'm only doing this because my parents forced me into it. And I'm sorry, I know I should have told you earlier, but..."

Rey was quiet. In the darkness, he saw her wipe a tear from her eyes. And then, she spoke.

"Do you know what the punishment is for a commoner who has an affair with a married noble?"

"No, I don't," said Ben truthfully. "We were never told."

"Of _course_ you don't. You only think about yourself, you piece of shit. Well, let me tell you. We get stripped naked and tied to a post. If it's a woman, like me, we get 'harlot' written on our foreheads and 'slut' written across our stomachs. Then, we get left like that for a day. People can do _anything they want_ with us, and we can't do a single damn thing about it. The royal court made those laws. _Your parents_ made those laws."

"I didn't know that-"

_"Shut up!"_ Rey shrieked, slapping him across the face. "Just _shut up already! Stop talking! Why the hell didn't you tell me earlier?_ We could have broken it off, we could have talked about what to do, we could have done _anything! Fuck you!"_

She took a deep breath before speaking again, this time not yelling at all.

"I thought you were better than them," she whispered. "I guess not."

And then she turned around and left through the secret opening of his room. Forever.

 

Ben and Emilia Solo were a happy couple at the wedding, and nothing about it betrayed that anything was wrong. And as they were lying in the bed of his room, whispering together about their future life and children and happiness, she told him that she had heard that on the same morning as their wedding, a commoner girl named Rey had finally agreed to marry Davey, a boy who lived next door to her, after refusing him for months.


	3. Chapter 3

It was almost time for Rey to leave. But she still stood in her underclothes, staring at her reflection in the mirror, not even having started to put on her armor.

The director was letting her borrow the good armor to honor her fourth year in his service. She had been looking forward to this occasion for years, but now that it was officially here, she felt nothing. Only emptiness.

Rey looked at her face. Her brown eyes, formerly bright and full of life, were buried deep into her bony face, dull and lifeless. Her whole body was so thin that a twig could break it, but somehow hundreds of men, some twice or three times her age and size, hadn't managed to.

It was always men who volunteered to take part in these games. The girls, like herself, were forced into them.

She had faced one or two girls in her years as a gladiator. They were very much unlike the men: scared, helpless, _pitiful._ Rey remembered crying for days and days after she killed them. It was always a thumb down from the crowd.

And yet though her body fought against her so hard that it seemed like her soul would burst out and leave her, she killed them anyway. The very thought of it forced out a choked sob.

The bell rang outside. It was time to leave.

Rey closed her eyes as she put the armor on. She didn't know the secret of how she turned from a pitiful little girl into a battle-hardened warrior every morning, and she sure as hell didn't want to find out.

The armor was as light and soft as her, and it purposely left a spot in her chest area open for ease of post-battle killing. Her sword, which she had earned from one of her hardest victories, complemented it perfectly.

The only part of her body that was visible, other than the little bit of skin on the left side of her chest, was her eyes. Those sunken brown eyes, filled with thousands of ghosts, forced her to run away from the mirror and into the entrance room, where a squire checked her armor and chatted to her about her opponent.

"His name is Ben," he said.

_His. Again._ "Another volunteer?"

"Actually, no. He was taken from his home. Just like you."

That was rare - not new, but rare. Rey instantly formed a kind of kinship with the mysterious Ben, and her hand tightened around her sword as she realized that she would probably have to kill him.

The battle was about to begin. Rey stepped through the doors and looked across the arena at the man who was to be her opponent.

The first thing that struck Rey was the fact that he wore no helmet. He was tall, the faint outline of his muscles visible through his light armor, and he smiled mysteriously as he held his battle axe in his right hand. Even across the distance, she could see his striking brown eyes and his face - not attractive, but pleasing to the eye, and eerily betraying no emotion but nonchalance.

He wasn't like the other young boys taken from the home. No, Ben was completely in control of himself, perhaps even more so than her, and when the judge called for them to start, he sprang into action instantly.

Within the first couple of minutes, she instantly detected the kind of warrior that he was. He was much like her, relying on his speed rather than his strength, though he seemed to have both in abundance. If she was going to win this, and she had won practically _every_ battle that she had participated in except for a couple in which the crowd decided to spare her, she would need to pour all of her energy into her speed and pray for the best.

He cornered her, look of strange determination on his face, and he blocked every single opening through which she could run away. And it was in that moment that Rey felt a flash of panic as he pressed her down, peering straight into her eyes, battle axe looming dangerously on her left side and his right.

Rey was tempted to close her eyes, but she pinched her leg to keep them open. She needed to see the crowd's faces (satisfied, not blood-thirsty as they had been during her last match) and their hands (still for now, while they considered what they should order Ben to do with her) and their thumbs (eventually pointed up).

He released her. Rey bit back a sigh of relief and extended her hand, allowing him to take it so that she could lift it up, as was the custom with victors over losers. He accepted it and smiled at her, but he was strangely not bloodthirsty at all.

"Nice fighting you, Rey," he whispered. "Want to go into the square after this for lunch?"

Rey raised an eyebrow. She hadn't expected this at all.

"Sure," she whispered back. "Allow me to change first."

"But of course. Allow me to change as well. Meet you here?"

"Meet me at the fountains. It's a much more civilized grounds on which to talk than a battlefield."

Rey put on her nicest tunic, a pale blue, and did her hair into a prim bun. She didn't know why she was trying so hard. Perhaps it was because of the mere unexpectedness of this meeting. No one had ever invited her out for a peaceful lunch after almost killing her, and she didn't know that anyone even would.

Or maybe it was because of Ben's kind, smiling eyes, and the fierce determination in them as he cornered her, and the way that perhaps underneath it all - or perhaps it was only her imagination - he did not want to kill her at all.

 

When Rey approached him at the fountains, Ben wore a formal-looking toga, and his hair was brushed through and looked as if it had been recently washed. He smiled shyly, and she smiled back, and together they walked to the nearest shop and bought a small steak, which they split in half and ate with their hands, giggling softly.

"So I heard that you were taken from your home to join the games?" Rey asked him when they had sat down.

He nodded but did not speak to answer her.

"So was I. I've been playing for four years, but I still haven't gotten used to it. It's not so much killing the big ones that bothers me, because they're used to it. They were expecting it. It's killing the young ones. The innocents."

"Me, too. But I've only been playing for a year. I haven't killed anyone like you yet."

Rey laughed. "You think I'm innocent?"

He nodded. "You have that look about you. You're not like the others I've played with. You're different."

"How so?"

"I don't know. Just a feeling."

"Sometimes," Rey confessed, "I stare at myself in the mirror before I go into battle. And I see how old I am, like I'm forty and about to die instead of nineteen with half my life ahead of me...and it scares me. Goddamnit, it scares me. So I'm not innocent, Ben. And I don't know if I'll ever be."

Ben looked at her and placed his hand on hers. "I understand. I feel the same way sometimes. I've given up all hope of getting married, honestly. Even if a woman loves me, I think I've been ruined too much by the games to ever love her in return."

Rey didn't know why that saddened her. She herself had never even _thought_ about marriage, let alone to a fellow gladiator whom she had just tried to kill. Now that she was thinking about it, though, her mind followed about the same path as Ben's: no one other than a fellow gladiator, whom she would have to fight and kill eventually, could ever understand what she was going through. No one.

She couldn't handle that heartbreak. And her heart was becoming too heavy to continue the conversation.

"I have to go now," she said. "My director will be expecting me. See you again tomorrow?"

"Of course."

 

The next day, the squire told Rey that she would be fighting Ben again. The crowd had loved their performance, he told her, and they were practically banging down the director's door to allow them to fight each other again.

"Good luck, Rey," he whispered to her. "They'll want you to win this time. That way the director will earn more money."

Rey smiled politely. But secretly, in the back of her head, she didn't think that winning could ever even be possible.

She was too distracted, not only by yesterday's conversation but thoughts about the games and leaving and life in general, and she was too unfocused to ever think about her speed or her strength. Ben, on the other hand, was the epitome of focus, and unlike the day before, he bested her fairly quickly.

The crowd's eyes were narrowed, strange grins on their faces, and Rey imagined blood streaming down their skin, knives in their hands. They looked as if they were ready to come into the arena and kill her themselves, perhaps even Ben and each other while they were at it. So it was no surprise to her when there was a wave of thumbs, all of them down except for perhaps one or two, which quickly switched sides when their neighbors nudged them angrily.

And just before Ben's battle axe swung down into her chest, and just after he leaned into her and whispered, "I'm sorry," Rey finally realized the secret to her morning transformation.

In her dreams, she was a rebel, fighting against the games and liberating every single gladiator in Rome. But when she put that armor on, she was just another helpless pawn in the cruelty of the games.

And there was nothing she could do about them.


	4. Chapter 4

**16 Years Before**

"Mommy, can I take my breakfast over to Rey?"

Leia Solo smiled at her son, Ben, as she watched him wave his spoon around, completely ignoring the bowl of cereal in front of him.

"I'm sure Rey is eating her own breakfast, Benny baby. Finish yours and then you can play with her."

"No, she already finished her breakfast. She gave me the secret signal."

"What's the secret signal?"

"You're not s'posed to know. It's con-fuh-den-tal."

"Well, whatever it is, I'm sure she'll understand that you have to wait. So how about you finish your breakfast, and then you can go."

Ben sighed and dumped another stack of Lucky Charms into his bowl. Then he buried his spoon in the already-overflowing mixture and inhaled it at the speed of light before running out his door and banging on Rey's.

"Why are you in your pajamas?" Mr. Kenobi asked, tilting an eyebrow as he let him in. "Is it one of your things again? Or did you just forget to change?"

"Doodoo," Ben whispered, turning around and running back home. His mother was already waiting for him there with shorts and a T-shirt, and she handed them to him while suppressing laughter.

"Take it slow," she said to him. "Don't put your clothes on backwards. That'll make it even longer until you see her. And you don't want that, do you?"

"No," Ben admitted, pulling his shirt on. "Can I go now?"

"Yes, you can. But be back before lunch."

But Ben was already running, knocking on the door again, and dashing through Mr. Kenobi's legs into the house, ready to play.

 

**12 Years Before**

_Tap, tap, tap._

Ben looked up from his homework and looked around the room for the source of the sound, eventually finding it outside his window. And when he peered through the glass, he saw Rey, hair in its usual three messy buns, eyes widening as she gestured with one hand for him to open the window while the other clutched the windowsill for dear life.

Still confused, Ben followed her request, holding out a hand to help her inside once he did. She took it, smiling gratefully, and slid into his bed.

"Okay," said Ben, "why are you sneaking in through the window like the Romeo to my Juliet when we have a door right there, and my parents love you?"

"I invited some girls from my math class for a sleepover, and they started being really mean. They completely ignored me and started talking trash about _everyone._ Including me. _While I was in the room._ So I told my parents what I was doing, and I sneaked out through the window, and now I'm seeing how long I can be gone before they notice anything."

Ben giggled. "I have books you can read while I finish my homework, and then I can bring a board game. Is Monopoly cool?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Rey reread the first Harry Potter book while Ben painstakingly did his math problems, and it wasn't until half an hour passed that he was free to get the game. They played for hours, long into the evening, and even when Ben's watch showed that it was past midnight, Rey's sleepover guests hadn't even shown an inkling of noticing her absence.

Finally, Ben's dad came into his room to tell both of them to go to bed and that the guest room had been prepared for Rey. And that was when the duo finally parted, and Rey stood up on tiptoes a tiny little bit and hugged him.

"I'd rather have you for a sleepover any day," she murmured.

"Me, too."

**9 Years Before**

"So," said Ben, "we're almost high school students. How do you feel about that?"

They were sitting on the roof of his house on the last night of summer, staring up at the stars and leaning into each other so close that from a distance, they would have been mistaken for one.

Rey sighed. "I don't even know. I keep hearing bad things about high school, how schoolwork is hard and making friends is even harder, and you know I've always been extra bad at making friends."

"Everyone will want to be your friend," Ben insisted. "And remember that we'll be in clubs and stuff, and people in our classes will adore you for sure. It's me they'll have a problem with. You know how much of a loner I am."

"Everyone likes to be alone. I'm sure they'll understand."

"Yeah, but I like being alone more than the average person. They'll probably think I'm weird or something. And if you're popular...I'm afraid you'll leave me and forget about me."

Rey shook her head, looking down into his eyes and no longer seeing the stars above them.

"Ben," she murmured. "Ben, think about what you said and then think about it again. We've been friends since we were _babies._ I won't leave you just because I'm popular and you're not. And if I become popular, I'm sure as hell dragging you into the spotlight with me. Got that?"

Tears pooled in Ben's eyes, making the scene blurry and dark. Rey pulled him into a hug, and he cried onto her shoulder and listened as she whispered in her ear.

"You're my best friend, Ben. And if anyone dares cross you, I'm going to kick their ass into oblivion."

**7 Years Before**

Ben was walking down the hallway, clutching his AP Chem textbook close to his chest. He was going to have a test next period, and he had Rey quiz him on the important details from the study guide that he had written the night before. He was so focused on doing review in his head that he didn't notice as a guy bumped into him. From the looks of it, he was the star quarterback, Armitage Hux.

"Watch where you're going, fatass," Hux hissed, kicking him in the knee and knocking him down, pushing his book away through the crowd. As Ben stood up, breathing in and out so that he didn't cry - yes, it was true that he had a little bit of pudge, but why did Hux have to be so mean? Why did _everyone_ have to be so mean? - the boy kicked him in the chest and pushed him down again.

Over and over Ben stood up, and over and over Hux's foot connected with his body. But then, he saw the slightly shorter boy fall over, shocked, and when he dared look up again, he saw that it was Rey, and that she was now getting into his face and grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.

" _Never_ treat my friend that way again," she hissed. "Or I'll do much worse than knock you over. _Asshole."_

Then, she walked over to Ben and helped him up.

"Are you okay?" she whispered, and he nodded, tears pooling in his eyes.

"Okay. Good. Now take a deep breath, and I'll walk you to your next class to make sure that they won't hurt you. All right?"

She held his hand, and it was warm and soft and small in his. And the way she hugged him right in front of his classroom was beautiful and gentle. And it was with her smile as she said goodbye, patting him comfortingly on her shoulder, that Ben realized that all throughout their seventeen years together, he had been falling in love, and he hadn't even known it.

 

**6 Years Before**

At graduation, Ben sat with Rey and her friends, who accepted him more eagerly than he had expected them to, and together they talked about their lives in high school and their futures through college. They recalled prom with fondness - most of the others had had actual dates, and Ben had gone with Rey just as a friend - and the general consensus was that the senior year was a worthy conclusion to a good run through college.

Ben's four years weren't good, but he didn't say that. He didn't want to ruin the mood of the occasion just because of the bitterness of the bullying that he had experienced.

Nearly the entire senior class graduated with good grades. Rey had gushed to Ben earlier about how she had been accepted to tons of good colleges way, way out of state, but she and Ben hadn't ended up picking the same one.

And soon, they would be far away from each other for longer than they had been in their lives.

Both of them were understandably worried, as they vented to each other for increasingly long amounts of times leading up to their parting. But Ben was especially so, because every second that ticked away on the clock was a second that he didn't confess his love, and to him a second that he was being ripped apart from the inside.

The graduation was filled with many such seconds. And they intensified when she hugged him, when she took a selfie with him and her other friends to celebrate their freedom, when she held his hand as they ran, excited, to their parents to have photos taken.

And yet Ben didn't tell her his biggest and newest secret. Even years later, he didn't know exactly why.

 

**The Last Day**

He was twenty-three, and she was a couple of weeks from her twenty-third birthday. They hadn't spoken to each other ever since that graduation when they bade each other tearful goodbyes, but now she was visiting him in his Boston apartment, and they were going to have a reunion.

"I'm bringing a friend over," she had told him. "I think you'll like him. I _hope_ you'll like him. He's a very good friend. I met him at college."

Ben spent all weekend setting the table and cleaning the house. And on the morning that the door rang, he opened it, hands shaking with anticipation.

Behind it was his dear childhood friend, arm wrapped around a tall man with a head full of blond curls.

"This is Lucas," Rey said with a smile. "He's my husband. Oh, Ben, it's so lovely to see you!"

Ben stepped forward and hugged her tightly, but all he could think about was the word _husband._

_Husband._ She was married.

_Husband._ He had waited too long to tell her how he felt, and now it was much too late for him. For _them._

_Husband._ He was still happy to see her. He would be happy to see her for as long as he lived.

But deep down inside, there would always be some sort of a pang in his chest when he saw her. Almost like an itch left unscratched.

"Come in, Rey and Lucas. I've been looking forward to seeing you both."


	5. Chapter 5

"Hold still!" Rey exclaimed in frustration, looking at her sister's reflection in the mirror.

"Sorry," Emma sighed.

Rey was taking locks of hair and spinning them into patterns, pinning them into place with the loads of barrettes that she had laid out. Tonight she chose blue and silver, to complement the dress that Emma was to be wearing at their ball, and the style was more complicated than any style she had ever tried out onto her sister.

"First ball," Rey said airily, smile on her face. "Are you excited? Think of all the people you'll get to meet!"

Emma grinned. "All the... _people."_ She winked, and Rey giggled.

"Well, I guess I'd better do your hair less complicatedly, then, if you're going to just undo it later." She smiled good-naturedly, and Emma smiled back.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll get much more guys than me," Emma said, expression suddenly somber, as she fiddled with her fingers. "I mean, you're you, and I'm just...me."

Rey looked down at her, eyebrows furrowing with seriousness.

"Emma," she whispered. "Don't say things like that about yourself. You're beautiful and amazing and smart and kind, and you're going to get just as many guys as I do, if not more. Got that?"

Emma nodded, still looking sad. Rey patted her on the shoulder warmly and then stood up to brush her own hair. She very rarely did anything too time-consuming with her hair, and most of the time that she had before the moment when they officially had to leave was spent on making Emma's beautiful.

Rey looked up at the clock on the wall and then at her sister.

"We have to go now," she said. "Or we'll miss our dramatic entrance. You ready?"

"I was _born_ ready."

Rey laughed. "Just an hour ago you were telling me about how worried you were that no one would like you. It's okay to be scared, Em. I was scared at my first ball, too."

"You never get scared," Emma insisted.

"I _do._ And sad, too, and angry, and frustrated. I'm a human being just like you, dear sister."

Emma hugged her tightly from behind. "Sometimes I forget that, to be honest. With how good you are compared to me..."

"Well, don't. I once cried over a dead bug I saw on the street. Anyway, let's go."

Holding hands, the two sisters left the room and entered the ballroom fluidly. Almost instantly, Emma retreated to the side, while Rey, being the oldest, flew into the center to dance. She saw loads of men and women she knew, some unnamed but familiar...

...and one man standing off to the side with dark brown eyes and beautiful black hair.

Rey moved to the side so that she could continue to look at him. He wasn't attractive in the conventional sense of the term, but he wasn't unpleasing to the eye either. He was tall, much taller than her, and he smiled at her warmly and mysteriously, as if daring her to come over and say hello.

So she did.

"Rey Kenobi," she said, holding out her hand for him to kneel down and kiss it. Instead, to her shock, he grabbed it and shook it.

No man had ever shaken her hand. That was reserved for other men. _Equals._

"Ben Solo. It's lovely to meet you. You've never been satisfied, have you?"

Rey raised an eyebrow. "May I ask what exactly is it that you mean? Because don't you think that's a tiny bit too forward?"

"I didn't mean _that_ , don't worry," said Ben, holding up his hands in defense. "What I meant was that I saw a fire in your eyes. Like you're willing to do anything to reach your goals. You're like me in that regard."

Rey could see it now. His entire body was alight with excitement, as if he was ready to jump onto the table and give a speech right this second. The revolution was brewing around them, and he seemed to have absorbed it all.

"So where's your family from, anyway?" Rey asked him.

He shook his head and waved a hand. "That's not important. What's important is what _I'll_ do. And that's a lot of things. Don't be surprised if you see me in a history book someday."

_So, you're poor,_ Rey thought, but she didn't say it. And instead, as she guided him through the crowd, chatting about nothing, she contemplated the few seconds of interaction that they had had.

She had seen his ears perk up when she mentioned the Kenobi name. He knew how powerful her family was, and how much money they could potentially give him in order for him to fulfill his revolutionary dreams. She wouldn't go as far as to say that that was the _only_ reason why he was so obviously interested in her, but it was definitely a huge part of it.

Because he was poor. His poverty radiated off of him almost as much as his energy, mingling with it, striking her straight through the head and the heart. And she, as the oldest daughter and the oldest child, needed to marry rich.

And finally...Emma. When Rey looked across the ballroom, she saw her younger sister, eyes shining as she looked at Ben next to him. She was in love, probably deeper than she ever had been in her life, and how could Rey deny her?

_Oh, I'm sure you'll get much more guys than me. I mean, you're you, and I'm just..._ me.

With that somber expression on her face, the one that haunted Rey even now...

"Come with me," said Rey firmly, without thinking once about her decision. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

So she kept taking Ben by the hand, clutching him tightly, knowing that she would have to let him go in just a couple of moments.

"This is Emma Kenobi," said Rey with a smile. "My sister. I think you two would get along quite well.

"I'm Ben Solo," he said, looking down at her and kissing her hand. "It's so, so lovely to meet you."

"I'll leave you to it!"

Rey walked away, pretending that she wasn't about to burst into tears, breathing and breathing and breathing again. The world would go on, with or without her and Ben's relationship, and Emma would go on especially.

 

The relationship was a success.

He wrote Emma love letters, and she read them aloud at the dinner table, and Rey looked at her and hugged her tightly with pride. He sent her little tokens sometimes, like flowers or weird coins that he found, and she kept them all on her desk and kissed them with a certain tenderness.

And then, three weeks after that first ball, Emma announced that Ben was coming to the house and asking their father for her hand.

"Really?" Rey exclaimed in awe. "So this is serious. You want to marry him."

"I do! I love him so much!"

"Oh, Emma, I'm so happy for you!" Rey squeezed her close to her and squealed.

"Will you be the maid of honor at the wedding?" Emma groaned into Rey's shoulder.

"Oh, of course!"

Rey would be _more_ than glad. She loved her sister more than she loved anything in her life, and there was no man in the world who could ever even slightly change that.

And during the negotiations, when she and Emma hid in a nearby room and watched and listened, she gave herself credit for not crying once.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Concept of vampires proposed to me by ladydepurple on Tumblr, but this particular plot is mine!

At first glance, Ben Solo, son of the priest in the old town of Salem, did not seem at all strange.

Yes, he wore all black, with a cape streaming down behind him, as opposed to the cape of his father, and as such was a common target for the ladies. Yes, he wore silver rings and a silver cross around his neck, but that - at least, the cross - only meant that he was a religious man, nothing more. And yes, he spent time alone, to the point where his neighbors began to consider it strange, but what could they know? Half the town could testify that he was a good man if the need arose.

But Ben didn't care about how the town perceived him, or for that matter anything else. He cared only about exterminating the evil that plagued the town - and, perhaps, the _world._

_Vampires._

Every night, Ben would walk like a shadow through the quiet Salem streets, stake ready in one hand, watching and waiting for a vampire to rise. They feared sunlight, he knew, and the only time he could see them was in the darkness. He was afraid of them, but in the night, it was _he_ who was in power.

Their faces were pale as snow, and their eyes had cruel, chaotic gleams. Their lips were bright red, patches of blue and purple bruises on their cheeks around them, fangs poking out from their lips ever so slightly, glistening in the dim moonlight.

As humans, some of them were tall, short, beautiful, ugly, kind, cruel, smart, dull, fun, boring. But all vampires were one and the same in Ben's night-time eyes.

He never went on full moon nights; that was when the werewolves came out, and his wooden stake did nothing against them. But it was the night before, when the moon bathed the night-time in pale white, that he met _her._

She had something made of wood in her hands - a wooden cross, by the looks of it, though the make seemed somehow different from his. Her hair was long and wild around her, and she looked at him with something in her eyes.

Fear? Panic? Anger? Sadness? Ben couldn't quite place her emotion. He had never been good at things like that. But he knew enough to say that there was _something._

"Rey Kenobi," she whispered, keeping her mouth almost closed the whole time.

"Ben Solo. Lovely to meet you."

"Are you hunting the vampires as well?" she asked him, smiling shyly.

"I am. Though I forgot my silver at home. I just have my wooden cross."

"I as well. The vampires, I believe, are congregating in the central plaza. That's what I heard last night when I hunted them."

"I was out hunting the creatures last night as well," Ben said in surprise, following her lead and looking around him. "I saw you nowhere. What parts of the city did you travel?"

"The northern parts," she said simply. "You're well-known among the community, Ben Solo. And I heard you were travelling the southern parts, so I took over the northern. Very efficient."

"Yes, that is true."

It was a believable claim. And Ben saw no reason why Rey would lie.

She led him through the city, making small talk the whole time, and gradually she lost the expression of fear frozen on her face. When it was near sunrise, neither of them had found a single vampire, but somehow, Ben didn't care.

"See you tomorrow?" he asked her as she was about to return home.

"Tomorrow is werewolf night. We're not going out. Remember?"

"No, I meant...during the day. Maybe in the marketplace or the park."

"Oh." Rey nodded. "Perhaps."

But the look on her face betrayed the fact that she didn't truly believe that that would happen.

 

It was a miracle to Ben how he had managed to fool the world for so long.

His father - and the rest of the people he knew for that matter - genuinely believed that he got the right amount of sleep. In reality, he slept maybe four or five hours a day, all in a mixture of the extra night-time hour or a stolen daytime nap, and he snuck extra food to make it seem like his alertness was at a normal level.

Werewolf nights were his saviors. He slept blissfully long, and his sleep was so undisturbed by nightmares that each minute was an eternity in itself.

Not _this_ werewolf night, though. This werewolf night, he was thinking about Rey.

She was unlike any other woman he had ever seen, and what was strange to him was that this vampire hunt was the first time he had ever seen her. She was beautiful and mysterious in one, short and cute and witty and kind, amazing and irreplaceable and irresistible.

And a woman. And a possible distraction from the most important thing in his life: the hunt.

It was true that she was a hunter, too, and therefore he wouldn't have to keep that part of his life secret from her, but it was still too much of a risk to even consider.

_I can't do it. I_ can't.

Ben thought that that thought would finally calm the trace of her frozen in his mind. But it didn't.

 

After the full moon night, when he was packing his things again, Ben left his silver at home on purpose. The last time he had left it, he had met Rey, so somehow, superstitiously, he thought that if he left it again, something good would happen.

It was dumb, yes. But he didn't care.

He walked through the city looking for both vampires and her, and it wasn't until midnight - judging by the clock tower in the central square - that he heard her voice. But the things that she was saying drove a stake into his heart.

"Is he around?" another female voice asked, sounding worried. Peeking around the corner, Ben saw Rey place a hand on her shoulder in comfort.

"I haven't seen him. But don't worry, dear friend. We are armed against him, and he doesn't know that I'm not like him. He trusts me."

Rey looked away from her friend and around, and her eyes widened when she spotted him.

_"Run!"_ she shrieked, pushing her friend to the side.

Rey didn't move, but the friend began to sprint, cloak flapping behind her, and Ben ran after her, wooden stake in hand, before he felt two hands push him down and pin his arms to the ground, knees digging deep into his belly.

"Get away from my friend," she hissed, leaning into him.

"Your _friend,"_ Ben protested, "is a _vampire._ And so are you, by the looks of it. Am I right?"

"Yes," Rey sighed. "Yes, I am."

"Were you converted before I saw you just now?"

"About a year, before, yes."

Ben's eyes widened in shock. "So...the night I met you-"

"Yes. I know what you're going to say, so don't say it."

Ben reached for his stake, trying to be subtle, but Rey saw what he was doing and punched him in the hand.

"Even now, you try to stake me? You persecute my people, and even when one of us is kind to you..."

"Your people are _monsters!"_ Ben screamed.

Rey looked at him, eyes narrowing.

"No," she said. "No, we're not. We're really not. We're actually fairly nice people, most of us, and we never bite unless the person asks us to. Obviously I can't speak for all vampires everywhere, but the vampires that I live with, the Salem ones, are nowhere near the kind of monsters that you seem to want to make us into. If you'd just walked with them for a while, talked to them, then you would have realized that. But it's too late now, isn't it, Ben?"

She paused, thinking, and for that second her grip on him slightly loosened. But Ben didn't try to run this time.

"If you apologize," she said to him, staring deeply into his eyes, "and promise never to persecute me or my friends again, or stake us, or call us monsters, then I'll set you free. Or, if you like, I can bite you, and you can join us, and we can be vampires together. Only if you agree, though. As I said, we never bite people without permission."

Rey's grip on Ben tightened as she watched him, and for a long time, he did not speak. And then, in a fluid motion, he lunged, reached for his stake, and flipped her over until it was he who was on top.

"Your 'people,' Ben hissed into her ear, ignoring the tears that were already coming to him, "are _monsters._ I don't care what you say about not all of you being like that. You destroy societies, you destroy Christian beliefs, you go against everything I stand for. And you must die."

She merely nodded. "Okay. If that's what you want." And then, she reached into her robes, pulled out a butcher knife, and aimed it directly at his heart.

For a minute, neither of them moved or spoke. Then, Ben whispered, so quietly that she had to lean in to hear.

"I fell in love with you, you know. And then you betrayed me like this."

"I think you betrayed me more, you little prick," she hissed, face betraying no emotion but raw anger. He looked deeper into her eyes, hoping to spot anything - _anything_ \- else, but still, there was nothing.

Her hand rose into the air, and her face distorted into rage. The knife rose into his chest, Ben thought about how that would be the end for sure-

-and then, nothing.

"Just kill me already!" he screamed at her. "Kill me, goddamit! Don't hesitate about it!"

"I'm giving you time to leave," she whispered. "Time to head back to your priest's house. You said we were monsters, and I'm proving you wrong. I could kill you right now. But I'm giving you time to leave."

Ben looked at her, not even moving out of shock. But then Rey pushed him away from her, ever so slightly, and he recovered his wits and grabbed his stake and moved away.

"Goodbye, Ben Solo," she said, standing up and dusting off her robes.

Ben's hand tightened around his stake. On shaky legs, he moved out of the alleyway, ready to head home.

But then, something overcame him, and he turned around, sprinting after Rey, who was slowly moving in the direction that her friend had run. He grabbed her by the collar and knocked her down, kicking her in the chin with one foot, and then he stabbed her through the heart, closing his eyes so as not to see her face.

He moved away with eyes still squeezed shut. He couldn't bear to think about what he had just done.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt was given to me by an anon ask on my Tumblr, lukassgoggles.

When Rey was old, and she looked back at her life, seeing it come not all at once like a movie but slowly and carefully like an album of photos, she decided that the moment her life truly drained out of her wasn't the moment when her husband died, or the moment when she learned that he was going to. It was the time she came into his room at exactly 7:21 PM on March 4, 2005, and she first saw how much of his old self had truly worn away.

 

Ben Solo in his lifetime had been bright and full of life. Sometimes, Rey would watch him walking around the room, eyes alight with a unique kind of fire, and she would wonder how one person could burn so brightly, and how wonderfully the stars had crossed that she had met him at that very first party, and that he had noticed her somewhere in the crowd, wearing that beautiful pink dress of hers and twirling around with delight. It felt surreal every morning when she looked him in the eyes and wondered how she had been blessed with a husband so perfect, but when he pulled her into him and kissed her on top of her head, everything turned beautifully real.

Ben Solo on 7:21 on March 4, 2005, lying in that hospital room, struggling to even keep his eyes open, was deathly pale, and his brown eyes stood out against it all like black rips in a face drawn by a child. Rey's heart sank into her chest just watching him, but she bit her lip and tried to ignore it as she sat down next to him on the bed and took his hand in hers. She tried to blink back the tears from her eyes, but they still came, dripping like hot wax down her cheeks and onto his.

"Hey," she murmured.

"Hey. Thanks for not asking me how I'm feeling. The nurses have been doing that every goddamn day. I don't know why they expect a different answer."

He winced from the pain of talking, and Rey let go of his hand and watched him sink even deeper in his pillow. She hadn't even thought that was possible.

"I don't know, either. What's life been like at the hospital, by the way, love? I'm sorry I haven't really had the time to see you."

"Don't apologize. Has Unkar Plutt the Asshole been keeping you at work again?"

"Yep. I've been trying to tell him that my husband is-"

She stopped. There was nothing that she could say that wouldn't make Ben - or herself - feel worse than they already were.

"-going to die soon?" Ben finished for her. "It's okay. You can say it. I've been talking to the therapist here, and I've already come to terms with it. It's okay."

Something about the way he said it, something about the pairing of _going to die soon_ and _come to terms with it_ and his child's drawing face, drained Rey of any energy that might have remained inside of her. The hand that wasn't holding her husband's squeezed into a ball, then loosened, and she sighed softly, as if it was _she_ who was dying a peaceful, sad death in her sleep.

"I'm sorry," said Ben. "I shouldn't have said that. I know how you feel about...this."

"Don't apologize. You're right. I should come to terms with it soon. I mean, it's true, right?"

"It is."

And then, Ben closed his eyes and sank even deeper into his mattress and his pillow, wincing in pain, barely able to reach over and press the button that called for a nurse.

"Should I leave?" Rey asked her when she came in.

"I think it's for the best for now," she replied, smiling with sadness and pity. "He's tired. He needs his rest. It has nothing to do with you, love. Don't worry. You've been doing great."

Rey shook her head. "I'm just doing what I have to."

"That's good enough. Some people don't do even that."

She took the Underground home, staring at her knees and not managing to say a single word, except when one of the workers asked her for her ticket or the fee.

 

Rey visited him every day. Even when she was tired from a day of hard work with Plutt the Asshole, even when she just wanted to collapse into bed and sleep forever, even when she didn't want to talk to anyone, even when the prospect of seeing her husband made her cry, she took the Underground to the hospital and came into his room.

Sometimes she brought him gifts, like flowers or chocolate or teddy bears or even pictures of cute things she had found in the park. Ben smiled when she showed him these, and she could tell that somewhere deep inside of him, he was remembering a long time ago, when both of them were young and innocent and happy.

They were _still_ young. Who was Rey fooling? She was twenty-four, and he was thirty. Maybe not innocent and happy as much, but young for sure. And as the therapist she had been seeing under Ben's request said, she had her whole life before her.

But Ben didn't. And he deserved life just as much as she did.

 

He died at 6:26 AM on April 9, 2005. As soon as Rey heard that the time was close, she dropped the book that she had been reading and raced through London's streets to him. And from the moment she walked in to the moment that his heartbeat stopped, she sat on the bed next to him and held his hand with both of hers.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My buddy Jay (crysilhouette on Tumblr) gave me the prompt of "Romeo and Juliet where they have to meet at a certain spot and dance in moonlight" when he learned that I was doing this, and to be honest, I didn't understand it at all. This spin on it came completely out of the blue. Hope you enjoy :)

Ever since Ben's twentieth birthday, every night just as he fell asleep, his eyes opened against his own will. His body moved, trance-like, through the darkness of his room, and he opened the window with no sound at all and crept out. He had no control over this, or over how he walked through the streets and to the moonlit park next to the biggest lake.

It was always moonlit. For some reason, on new moon nights, he was always able to fall asleep easily.

_She_ was always waiting for him. She had long hair that was always perfectly brushed, and she wore a ring of flowers around her head and a soft blue dress around her body. It was at this point that the trance was over, and he was able to take her by the arm and guide her into the middle of the grass and put his arms around her waist.

They danced for the whole night, under nothing but the light of the moon and the stars above them. It was unsettling and surreal and beautiful, and Ben didn't understand it at all, but in those moments, he didn't care.

She never spoke to him. He didn't know how her voice sounded, or even her name. And he never spoke to her, either.

But there were two things that Ben was certain of in these nightly escapades: he loved her, and she loved him.

 

As soon as the sun rose, he always left without a goodbye, entranced again. He didn't look behind him to see where she went, and he didn't even know whether she lived in the city or was homeless in the park. Sometimes in the day, he came to that very park to look for her, but he, for some reason, could never find the exact place, with the exact lake, where they danced.

It wasn't until a couple months after he first started looking that Ben realized that he had never once gone to that park on a new moon night.

So the next time that it happened, that was what he did. He recalled the steps from years and years of practice, and he brought with him his trusty dagger in case there were any intruders. This time, the spot was there, and he rejoiced inwardly as he stepped inside it, looking for her, keeping his eyes and ears open for any sight or sound.

He looked ahead. But he never once looked behind.

So when he felt arms around him, squeezing him so tightly that his dagger fell out of his hand and into pitch black darkness, he didn't expect it for a second.

"Hello, Ben Solo," a voice whispered in his ear, surprisingly melodic and sweet. "I'm Rey. Why have you come to kill me?"

"I...I didn't," he said defensively, too terrified to try and break free. "I wanted to see you. I wanted to figure out why I was led to you on moon nights but not dark ones. I only brought this dagger in case I was attacked. I did not come to kill you, my lady. I swear."

"You didn't? Everyone always comes to kill me."

"Well, I didn't."

She released him, and then she swept the dagger away with a foot and lit a stick in her hand with a piece of flint and steel. Sure enough, it was her, though she wore a black suit, and her hair was atop her head in a messy bun.

"I'm a witch," she told him, grabbing him by the hand. "I am persecuted in your kingdom, as you likely know. So I live in hiding, afraid of what people like you might do to me. And I can't do magic in the new moon, which is why I never lead you to me then."

"But why do you lead me to you in the first place?" Ben asked, looking at her with furrowed eyebrows.

"I've watched you since you were a young child. And as you grew old, I fell in love with you. But I was too shy to approach you. I didn't know if you would ever love me if I revealed my true form. So as soon as you turned twenty, close to my own immortal age, I began guiding you to me on the nights when I could use my power. Moonlight dances are harmless, after all. No man would ever kill his dancing partner."

"No man would ever kill his dancing partner," Ben repeated.

"Yes. And I knew it was wrong, I knew that I should reveal myself to you eventually and not be with you under false pretenses, but I couldn't bring myself to. I knew that you didn't truly love me, even though I loved you more than I could say, and I couldn't end it. I just _couldn't."_

"I love you," Ben murmured, leaning into her. "No matter what you say, no matter what my fellow countrymen say about witches, I love you. So don't worry about any of that, because I love you, and I don't care about anything else."

He moved to kiss her, but Rey just stood still, eyes open with shock. "You...you do?"

"Yes. Of course. May I kiss you?"

"Yes," she breathed. "Yes, yes, you may."

Her lips were warm and soft, and her arms around him were gentle and kind. Loving her was nothing how he ever imagined loving a witch. And so, in those couple of second, he fell deeper in love with not only her, but how the love itself felt.

"HALT!" someone yelled, and Ben released her in shock.

"The city guards," he whispered after a second. "It's okay, love. It's okay."

"No, it's not," she whispered back, shaking with panic. "They know I'm a witch. They've been chasing after me for months. We have to run!"

She took his hand, squeezing so tightly that it hurt, and they ran through the woods step in step. It seemed as if everything was going to be find, as if they had escaped-

-and then Ben felt a pain in his chest. When he looked down, he realized that an arrow had pierced him through the heart.

"Ben!" Rey shrieked. "Come on, let me pick you up, we can take you to a witches' village I know, and they can give you medicine-"

Another shot, one that sounded like a whistle in the cool night air, and Rey collapsed onto the ground, shot cleanly through the throat. And it was in that moment that Ben finally collapsed, right on top of her, and he took her by the hand in some sort of weak gesture of comfort.

It lasted only for a second, before everything went blacker than the black they were enveloped in, but it was the most beautiful feeling in the world.


	9. Chapter 9

In the night, when Rey took her clothes off before going to bed, she always stared at them for a long, long time.

She wore a black hood and a robe, all of which covered her entire body but her eyes and her mouth. And even those were barely visible by the crowd from a far distance, so invisible that no one knew her identity. But even so, everyone feared her.

That is, everyone who had committed a crime. No one innocent ever feared the executioner.

Treason. Disrespect. Infidelity. Theft. The crimes were read and decided by her companion, the judge. She was nothing more than the woman who swung the sword.

Some of the people she killed were guilty of the crime they had been charged with, and some were innocent. She didn't know which was which.

A long time ago, when Rey had first joined the business to make an extra silver or so and support herself, she had been extraordinarily curious. Her nights were spent walking through the streets and investigating, figuring out whether they were truly guilty. Most of them were, during that early phase, and if they were innocent, Rey had been taught to keep her mouth shut so as not to be accused of treason and be on the chopping block herself. She always felt torn apart while executing the innocents. She could only fake illness so many times.

After a while, it became so hopeless, so draining, to execute those that she knew were not guilty, that Rey decided to stop her investigating business. Instead, she assumed that everyone was guilty before the eyes of the chopping block and God. It was easier for her and it was easier for everyone if she merely trusted the word of the king.

 

Usually, several executions were planned per day, and most of them were fairly quiet events that few people attended. But tomorrow, Ben Solo's execution would last from the morning to the evening.

He had been accused - and found guilty - of heavy treason against the crown. Supposedly, he had conspired with the mafia of another kingdom to unsuccessfully overthrow the king and put himself in power, but a loyal servant named Armitage had bravely intercepted the letters and delivered them to the king himself. No matter how much Ben claimed innocence, he was thrown in prison, and an execution order was signed and delivered to the judge and Rey.

It was a rather strange case. And normally, Rey would merely accept it as fact and move on.

But she had been walking around the castle one evening, preparing for a secret meeting with the king about a certain execution order that he had signed. And she saw that particular servant, easily recognizable by his ruler-straight back and his head of bright red hair, walking around as well, holding a bunch of papers in his hand.

Curious, she followed him, quiet as a cat. She had always had a talent for hiding in the shadows.

She watched him go to his room and meticulously write papers, whispering to himself. He had dropped a few as he walked away, clutching the ones that he had written like they were the only thing keeping him alive, and from the few that Rey had read, she was able to figure out the story.

It was _Armitage_ who had conspired with the mafia and almost gotten the king killed. He was caught by a servant on one of his nightly expeditions, and one of the mafiosi he was with managed to murder him before he blabbed about what he had seen to anyone. That, however, alerted Armitage to the fact that he was under suspicion, and to clear himself of any accusations of treason, he decided to pin the blame on Ben Solo, another servant living in the same castle whom no one trusted due to his quietness and the mildly off-putting air around him. But as Rey took the letters and was about to take the matter to the king, Armitage, who had apparently seen her, ran up to her and tore them from her hands.

"Don't say one goddamn word," he had whispered into her ear. "Or you'll be like the servant who had seen me. You read about that, right, you fucking snoop?"

Rey had been too terrified to do anything but nod.

 

Weeks later, Armitage's framing plot succeeded, and it was Ben Solo who was being accused. He was found guilty instantly with the forged letters against him, and as Rey stared at her executioner's robe and let her tears fall freely, he was sitting in prison, eating nothing but bread and drinking nothing but muddy river water, if that. And the only person who knew his innocence would never be believed.

She could try to tell the king, but what good would that do, except throw her in the prison alongside him and put her own head on the chopping block? Rey felt hopeless, the worst feeling in the world, and for a rare time in her life, she wished that she had a different job.

She was tempted to go down into the dungeons and tell Ben that she knew what he truly was. Perhaps it would be a small comfort before he died.

But it wouldn't. She knew that. The best comfort she could offer him at this point was a quick, sudden, and painless death.

So on the morning of his execution, after the judge's sentence was nothing but a dull ringing in her ears, that was what she did.


	10. Chapter 10

“Just ask her out! What’s the worst that could happen?”

Ben Solo and his best friend, Armitage Hux, were sitting on his porch and eating the ice cream that they had walked down the street to buy, even though it was only early spring, and frost still covered trees and buildings, and their parents had told them repeatedly never to eat ice cream while it was this cold outside.

“We’re seniors, though,” Ben had said firmly, taking Armi by the shoulders and bumping him against himself, “and pretty soon, we won’t have to listen to them. Might as well practice, am I right?”

Armi had raised an eyebrow then, and he raised an eyebrow now, watching Ben wave his arms around and rant about how much he _couldn’t,_ just _couldn’t,_ ask Rey Kenobi out to their senior prom.

“C’mon, dude,” Armi sighed, patting his friend on the back. “What’s the worst that could happen? You haven’t answered my question.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She rejects me in front of the entire goddamn senior class-”

“-so don’t ask her out in front of the entire goddamn senior class. Ask her out in private. Literally that simple. I just solved all of your problems. You’re welcome.”

“Okay, fine. She rejects me in private, and then she goes to her friends and laughs about how much of a loser I am, and her friends laugh to _their_ friends about how much of a loser I am, and in the end the entire goddamn school knows about the time I tried to ask out the most popular girl in the county.”

Armi’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Would she really do that? Didn’t someone try to ask her out when we were all in ninth grade, and she just politely told him no and left it at that?”

Ben looked up, thinking, and it was only because Armi tapped him on the shoulder that he licked up his ice cream and prevented it from melting all over his clothes.

“Fine,” he sighed, taking a bite out of the cone. “You win. I’ll ask her out tomorrow after school.”

“Good luck, Ben,” Armi said, genuine smile on his face as he looked at his friend. “I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

 

Ben wore his best clothes the next day, and on his way to school, he had stopped by the florist’s and bought a bouquet of pink and white roses. He had at first been torn about whether to make a small deal out of it so he wouldn’t be humiliated or to make a huge deal so he would have a fun story to tell if they ever got married, and after a long conversation with Armi and, when she overheard, Rey’s best friend Jess Pava, he had decided to tread the middle line.

Jess had delivered a note to her that said to meet him after school in the gardens, so she was already waiting, wearing a simple blue dress and a yellow ribbon around her short hair.

“Rey,” Ben said to her, throat clamming with panic, all of the beautiful words that he had spent all of last night planning out disappearing from his head. “I’ve been in love with you ever since we were in middle school. And I brought you hear to ask you…will you go to senior prom with me?”

Her mouth parted ever so slightly, and it was such a subtle gesture that Ben found himself unable to read it. And then, blissfully, she nodded, running up to him and wrapping him in a hug.

“Yes,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Yes, yes, yes.”

She pulled away, and as he handed her the bouquet, she still had a look of shock on her face.

“I had no idea you felt the same way as I did,” she said, taking his hand and guiding him to a bench. “I mean, you’re you, and I’m just me.”

Ben had said those exact words to at least one of his friends, and that realization made him suck a deep breath of shock. Oh, how lucky he was that for the first time in his life, he had taken Armi’s advice! If he hadn’t, then this perfect moment, and the feeling of her hand slipping into his and her head leaning on his shoulder, wouldn’t have existed at all.

 

According to her phone calls, Rey had gone with a couple of her friends to pick out prom dresses, and as such wouldn’t be available for a date on Saturday. Ben himself, who was just borrowing a tux from his father, who had been more than glad to lend it to him for a night, decided to spend the day catching up on homework and going to the gym, which he had been missing for a long time. The Sunday after that, Ben borrowed the car and went to Rey’s house to pick her up.

“So, can I see your prom dress?” he asked as he led her from the front door and into the front passenger seat. “I’m guessing you picked it out already.”

“I did,” she said, smiling mysteriously. “But I’m not showing you. It’s a surprise. For prom night.”

“So, like, when you get married, and you’re not allowed to see your bride in her dress until the wedding day?”

“Yep. Exactly like that. Jess is doing the exact same with her date. Says it’s good to keep them on their toes.”

“On their toes?” Ben asked, pressing his foot on the brake to stop at the red light. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It really is, isn’t it? So many girls act like their boyfriends are mythical beasts or something that they need to control. I’ll show you when we get home.”

Ben grinned. “My tux is just a boring old tux, but my mom gave me a tie with penguins on it for my birthday, and I’m gonna wear that. I’ll show you later.”

He wasn’t just grinning because of the joke, and because the opinion that she had of dating was very unlike that of most other girls. He was grinning because that drive to the movies was the first time that she had ever called him her boyfriend.

 

Prom night, Ben would recount for years to come, showing his photo album with pride, was the best night of his life ever. He, Rey, and their friends had decided to all carpool, and he rejoiced in the thought of everyone being cramped in the back while he and his girlfriend proudly sat in front, looking over at each other whenever someone behind them made an exceptionally rowdy joke. This proved to be more often than should even be possible during so short of a drive and with a group of people who had previously been called by their teachers “polite” and “a pleasure to have in class.”

Rey looked beautiful in a long blue dress and hair done up with silk ribbons, and she was wearing cool tones of makeup on her face that complemented her perfectly. She was a good dancer, as he soon learned, much better than him, and during the slow songs, she whispered suggestions and encouragements into his ear, and when he butchered her legs with his awful dance moves, she didn’t judge him once.

“Everyone makes mistakes when they start,” she told him, guiding him by the hand to the juice table when they were both tired. “But with me, you’ll learn how to dance. You’ll have to.”

Somehow, even though he hated big gatherings like that, Ben didn’t mind at all.

“As long as we can go home after that and watch TV in our underwear while eating ice cream out of the tub.”

“What kind of girlfriend would I be if I said no to that?”

 

One thing became another after graduation. Ben first had a girlfriend who was studying meticulously for exams, both of them so busy that they hardly saw each other, then a fiancée who wanted to get through college and become a doctor before they got married, then a wife who he was sure was ten times more successful than him.

“Look at my wife,” he would whisper, watching her walk on stage and receive one award after another for the medical papers that she wrote and the lives that she saved. “That’s my wife right there. She’s ten times better than I am.”

Rey overheard him talking like that and smacked him in the face every time he even so much as _thought_ about the idea that he was inferior to her.

“In a good relationship, the partners are equals,” she would tell him, putting his “Employee of the Year” award from his business job lovingly next to one of her own plaques. “You’re just as valuable as me to the world and your company, if not more. I’d never have married you if I didn’t think that you were amazing and perfect.”

And then she swooped in and kissed him on the cheek, wiping away any feeling of doubt that he might have been feeling.

No one believed in him during those office-job days, and especially not when he took less hours and saved up money to start his own business. But she always did.

And she was right.

 

They were both incredibly successful when Ben first mentioned the idea.

“I’ve been thinking about children for a long time now,” he said, placing a hand on his knee and fiddling nervously. "Ever since we got married, actually. And of course, I understand if your mind doesn’t exactly follow the same patterns as mine, but I would really love to be a father. And for you to be my children’s mother.”

“I’d like the same thing.”

She kissed him firmly on the lips, and in that kiss, Ben had a vision of tiny arms around his leg, squeezing as tightly as possible.

 

They went to doctors to find out the best methods. They stopped using the birth control that they had been using for the longest time. And when they finally learned that Rey was pregnant, the entire house was practically turned upside down in preparation.

Ben refurbished the guest room to be a baby’s room, and he ordered a pale blue crib from IKEA which he set up, humming a lullaby to himself. Rey knitted little fuzzy animals and constructed a mobile from which she could hang them, even setting it up so that it turned around and played music. The entire house was set up for the missing piece of the puzzle, and even the thought of the fact that they would soon have a baby, brought a mixture of excitement and anxiety to Ben’s mind.

It would be a girl. They had already long ago decided to name her Jane.

And on the night she was to finally be due, to arrive into the world as nothing but a bundle of smiles and warmth and beauty, Rey and Ben were sitting in the hospital room, and he was whispering, “Push!” and squeezing her hand tightly.

“You’re hurting me, Ben,” she complained, but there was a smile twinkling in her eyes.

 _Beat. Beat. Beat._ Ben was comforted by the gentle tapping of her pulse on her wrist, showing that she was still alive. Showing that she could still do this.

The contractions went on for hours and hours, and somewhere in the middle of them, Ben drifted off to sleep in the cozy chair that he was sitting in. It wasn’t until around midnight that he was awoken by a scream.

 _“Ben!”_ Rey was yelling. _“Ben, it hurts so much, get the nurses, help me, it’s bleeding, help, help, HELP!”_

She was covered in blood. Frantically, Ben pressed the button that was supposed to call for the nurses. Quicker than a flash, they were there, and as he watched, they moved at an impossible speed, trying to restore her back to normal.

It was too much. Ben fainted again, and his last thought was nothing but blackness.

 

The next day, one of the doctors came to him, holding a sleeping child in his arms.

Sleeping. But alive.

“We managed to save the child,” he said, speaking in a soft tone. “But Mr. Solo, I’m so sorry, but we couldn’t save your wife.”

“Jane,” Ben whispered as he took her into his arms. The news still wasn’t registering to his head.

And even when it did, he would never cry in public. He had a child that he needed to raise, and he couldn’t bear to hurt her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GO WATCH THE LAST FIVE YEARS EVERYONE IT IS A WORK OF ART

**“Still Hurting”**

Rey steadied her hand against the wooden door as she twisted her key in the lock. Usually there would be noise inside her and Ben’s apartment, she thought as she swung it open, maybe the TV or the radio or upbeat music playing. That feeling of her husband finally being home was what she liked the most about coming back from Ohio.

But this time, there was nothing but a haunting silence.

“Ben?” she called inside. “Ben, I’m sorry I yelled at you when you visited. Are you there? We need to talk. For real this time. _Ben?”_

And then she noticed the envelope on the desk, stark white against the dark brown wood, her name written on it in black pen. She picked it up, anticipation rising, and unearthed a key and a letter.

_Rey,_ the letter read.

_I called Anna to help me back my bags, and I took myself out of our bank account today. I’ll be living with her now._

_I really didn’t want to do this. I wanted to stay with you forever, to hold our children in my arms and kiss you and them with the same love. I wanted to support you and hold your hand throughout life’s journey._

_But I_ couldn’t, _Rey. We spent more time as enemies then as friends, and you seemed oblivious to it all._

_I’m sorry. I wish you a good life and a good career._

_Goodbye, Rey._

_Ben Solo_

Rey stared at the letter, face entirely blank.

_What about you?_ she asked it mentally. _What about the texts you won’t show me? What about all the times you ignored me for your writing?_

It had been a long time coming. Perfect, perfect Ben Solo, who was probably off somewhere gallivanting with his “just a friend” Anna and writing the manuscript for his next novel, smile on his face the whole time, was finally tired of her.

Rey crumpled the paper up and threw it in the wastebasket in a feeble attempt to keep herself from crying. She had lived without him for all but the last five years. She could live without him some more.

 

**“Shiksa Goddess”**

The black car sped into the driveway, and Ben Solo hopped out of it practically in an instant as he raced up to his girlfriend’s door and practically banged on it. After he did, he wrapped her in a tight hug and picked her up, grinning widely.

“I missed you,” he murmured into her ear as he plopped her in the seat beside the drivers’.

“You saw me what, two hours ago?”

“I don’t care. I miss you no matter how much I see you.”

“Aw, Ben!” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “How does your mother feel about me? Have you talked to her?”

“Oh, she knows about you. She’s still in shock that I’m dating someone outside of my religion, but I don’t care. I’m technically not supposed to listen to her, and besides, I’m sure she’ll love you when she sees you. Everyone loves you when they see you.”

“Even you?”

“Yep, even me.” As he pulled out of the driveway, he kissed her softly on the nose. “ _Especially_ me. I’m more in love with you than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“Nope. Won’t.”

And as Ben watched Rey giggle in the car seat, he thought about how much he wanted to be with her forever.

 

**“See I’m Smiling”**

The river was burbling softly behind them. Birds twittered up top, and there was no wind at all.

“I’m glad you came to Ohio,” Rey said, looking up at Ben. “I don’t think we’ve been here together for a long time.”

“No. We haven’t. I’ve just been so busy…”

“Yeah. But we’ll start over this weekend, right?”

“Right. I like your sweater, by the way.”

“Thanks, I’m borrowing it from Betsy. Makes me look like Waldo, but I like it.”

“Oh, it does!” Ben exclaimed, giggling. “I didn’t even notice that. By the way, I forgot to tell you, but I can’t stay the whole weekend. I have to leave on Sunday afternoon.”

“Book stuff?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Book stuff.”

Rey shrugged, though it was obvious that she was hiding disappointment, and that whatever fragility surrounded them was slowly shattering.

“Well, okay. At least you’ll get to see my show tonight. I’d say it’s a pretty good one. It doesn’t suck, at least. And you can meet my actor friends. I’ve been telling them _so much_ about you!”

Rey was about to hug him, but then his phone buzzed and he checked it.

_“Ugh,”_ he groaned.

“What is it?”

“The book stuff is tomorrow. I’m going to have to leave in a couple of hours. I can’t see your show. Sorry, Sunshine.”

“Do you _have_ to? Can’t you skip it? Just once?”

“No, Rey. I can’t. It’s important.”

_“No! It’s not important! It’s just another fucking party that you miss spending time with your wife over, and I know for a_ fact _that you can skip at least one, because I asked one of your friends and they said it wasn’t mandatory, and especially since it’s my_ fucking birthday _and you can’t even stay with me just for a night!”_

“Rey-”

“I know why you don’t want to stay with me,” she hissed, voice laced with bitterness. “You just want to spend time with your _girlfriends._ ”

“Rey, you’re being crazy-”

_“NO, I’M NOT! SHUT UP ALREADY! LET ME TALK, YOU SELF-CENTERED SHIT!”_

She was crying by now, but Ben wasn’t going to her, wasn’t even moving, didn’t even look as if he was crying himself. And it was in that moment that Rey knew for sure that their relationship was over.

 

**“Moving Too Fast”**

“Hello, is this Ben Solo?”

“Yes, it is. Who is this?”

“I’m Anna, an agent from Penguin Random House. I wanted to call to say that your manuscript, _Burn,_ is being considered for publication. When would you be able to meet with me and talk about it?”

“Would tomorrow work?”

“Wait, let me check…Yes, tomorrow would work.”

“Okay, thank you. Thank you so much.”

“All right, see you then.”

The phone clicked. And even though Ben was in a public park, he couldn’t resist a loud, intense whoop.

He hopped onto his bike and drove all the way to Rey’s. He couldn’t wait to tell her the good news.

 

**“A Part of That”**

“Ben, do you want to go to the dinosaur museum again? Ben? _Ben?”_

Ben wasn’t answering her again. Rey walked around to tap him on the shoulder and saw that he was holding a pen and a notebook in his hand.

_Working again._ He had been doing that a lot lately, ignoring her and everyone else for his writing. Apparently it was part of the package.

And if she was in love with him, which she _was,_ she was going to just have to tough it out.

 

**“The Schmuel Song”**

Rey flopped onto the couch and sighed sadly. It was another long, boring day at her waitress job, nothing new, just the same old. And she was intensely, immeasurably bored.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, walking in with concern on his face.

“Nothing.”

“Aw, come on. There must be _something_ wrong.”

“It’s nothing. Just another boring day at work.”

“Is that it? You’re bored with your job?”

How did he always know? “I want to be an actress. But I can’t bring myself to go to any of the auditions.”

“Rey. Imagine if Van Gogh hadn’t decided to paint his first painting. Or if Dickens hadn’t decided to write his first manuscript and send it for publishing. Or, heck, if Audrey Hepburn hadn’t decided to go to _her_ first audition.”

“I’m not any of them, though. I’m just me.”

“Rey, you are _not_ just you. You’re perfect and beautiful and amazing, and you should totally go to that next audition. I cut a clip out of the newspaper just for you.” He tossed it at her, and she examined it.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll try out. Emphasis on _try._ ”

“Nope, emphasis on _out._ As in, you’re putting yourself _out_ there. You’re going to break _out_ as a big-time star. And I’m so _out_ proud of you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does, if you use _out_ as a censor for _damn_ or _fucking._ Which I am.”

Rey laughed. “I’ll go make dinner.”

“Nope. When you’re a star, you won’t have to make dinner. We’ll eat _out_ tonight. To celebrate your initiative.”

 

**“A Summer in Ohio”**

Was working at the community theater, playing the same exact roles over and over again, boring Rey out of her mind? Yes, it was.

Did she absolutely miss Ben, who had said that he couldn’t come because of “book stuff?” Yes, she did.

Did she feel stuck, as if she was never going anywhere but Ohio, and as if she was never going to move out of the rut she had dug herself in? Yes, she did.

But it counted as experience, and someday, _someday,_ maybe she would get a legitimate gig. So she bit her lip and she toughed it out, and she called Ben and begged him to come with her, knowing that every time, she would get the exact same answer.

 

**“The Next Ten Minutes”**

“Do you, Ben Solo, take Rey Kenobi as your lawfully wedded wife?”

Rey saw both her parents and Ben’s, wiping tears from their eyes with handkerchiefs. She herself was close to crying as she heard his “I do,” and the tears finally came when he wrapped her into himself and kissed her.

“I love you,” he murmured in her ear.

“I love you, too.”

They had, ever since the moment he had proposed to her, decided on a small wedding. And after the ceremony, in wedding clothes and all, the duo went to the dinosaur museum where they had had their first date.

It was a strange place to go after a wedding. But it was the only one that truly represented their love.

 

**“A Miracle Would Happen/When You Come Home to Me”**

Ben was married now, and he showed it by the ring on his finger that he wore everywhere. But it seemed as if women other than Rey were more and more attractive every second that he saw them, and it _especially_ seemed as if they wanted him more.

Girls in restaurants and bars, smiling at him flirtatiously and offering to buy him a drink. Women at work, asking if he would look over their manuscripts. And especially Anna, his editor, brushing her hand over his as she fixed typos in his writing, looping her arm around his during important meetings, leaning her head on his shoulder after a long night of talking.

But he was married. So he tried his very hardest to say no to them all.

After all, it was what he wanted.

 

**“Climbing Uphill”**

“When you come home to me, I’ll wear a sweeter smile, and hope that for a while you-”

“All right, that was good. You can go now. We’ll call the number you gave us if we want to meet you again.”

“Okay, thank you. Thank you very much.”

“No problem.”

It was that conversation on repeat practically every day of Rey’s life. Like a shitty cassette with her face in the middle of it.

Sing the same exact song in an off-key voice, coming after hundreds of girls who were better than her in every way. Get told, every single time, that she would get a callback if they were interested in her. Wait forever and forever for her phone to ring, but never hear it.

And, of course, going back to summer stock in Ohio, and pretending that it was going to help her in any way, and also that she wasn’t jealous of Ben at all.

She was supportive of him, of course. He was so successful, and so amazing, and he supported her too, even when there was nothing to support, but she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it were _she_ who was getting callbacks, and _him_ who was stuck in a miserable rut.

Rey hated herself for thinking that way. But she did it anyway.

 

**“If I Didn’t Believe in You”**

“Rey, there’s another book party tonight.”

“Not going.”

“Huh?”

“I said, I’m _not going._ I always get pushed to the side at these parties, and I’m sick of it. I’m staying home tonight.”

“Well, I’m not staying with you. I’m going. That’s final.”

“I don’t care. I’m staying home no matter _what_ you say. So don’t even try to talk me out of it.”

“Rey. Listen.”

Ben knelt down to look her in the eye.

“I know sometimes you feel like I don’t love you, or that I don’t support you. But trust me, no matter what you do, I’m cheering in the sidelines. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even be with you at all.”

Rey stood up and walked away, not even trying to hide the bitterness in her every move.

“Rey, come back here and listen to me. Please. Why is it that there’s always something pushing us apart? Why does my writing have to be an obstacle to our relationship instead of just a factor? Why can’t you just believe in me, like I believe in you? Rey, _please._ ”

She was still walking away, ignoring him, not listening.

“I don’t want you to fail. I honestly don’t want that. But I think that if you just hold on, just keep pushing, then you’ll do great – _REY, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME?”_

She turned around and glared at him but said nothing. He breathed softly before speaking again.

“Remember what I told you before your first audition? About Van Gogh and Dickens and Audrey Hepburn? Well, no one can make you a star. Only you can make yourself a star. And I’m not going to drop myself into failure just because you can’t succeed. Because I believe in you, and I love you, and I support you, so why can’t you support me?”

Rey was still silent.

“Now why don’t you put on your dress, and we’ll go to this stupid party. Just once. All right?”

She took off her earrings and went into her room. Behind her, Ben could hear the locking of the door.

 

**“I Can Do Better Than That”**

For how much Rey’s education system emphasized the importance of college, so many of her friends and classmates had chosen not to go. They had just gone to the suburbs, picked out a house, and gotten pregnant. Such a simple, subservient life, like it was the 1950s when it was really the early 2010s. And the only thing Rey was thinking when she moved to the city was how much she didn’t want to end up like that.

She dated guys, all of whom blew her off to focus on themselves and their careers. And each time, whenever she fell, instead of crying, she picked herself up and tried again. She would not give herself up for any man.

Ben Solo, her new boyfriend, didn’t want her to sacrifice herself. That was most of why she loved him so much, and why she had already, so soon, asked him to move in with her.

“We’ve been through so much together,” she had told him, “and we can do so much more than that. Together.”

He hadn’t said yes yet. But he also hadn’t said no.

 

**“Nobody Needs to Know”**

_Anna: Hey, want to meet at my place? I have condoms_

_To: Anna: Yeah sure, Rey’s still in Ohio_

_Anna: <3_

_To: Anna: <3_

Ben shut his phone off and squeezed his eyes to let the tears fall. How had he come this far?

His and Rey’s relationship had seemed so good. They were the perfect couple, so kind and loving, and now…

Now, everything was crumbling. He needed to escape, just for a while, and he couldn’t think of how except to come to Anna. Anna was so gentle, so beautiful, and she was so good to him.

_Oh, Rey…_

Guilt tore him apart, and so did fear. But in the moments that he was with Anna, he didn’t care about any of that. He was away from his wife, and he was in the eye of the hurricane, and hell was swirling all around them. And yet he persisted, pretended to Rey that nothing was wrong, and she seemed willing to go on with the lie.

How was she not noticing what was happening? How was she not noticing their relationship falling apart, everything crumbling under their feet, everything being absolutely destroyed, both of them clinging for dear life to the ship that was sinking already?

_God, Rey, why are we still doing this?_

His bus slid past the dinosaur museum. He would visit her soon, in Ohio, and he would wear a long-collared shirt to hide the marks on his neck. Just another lie to the house that was built on them.

After a moment’s silence, he opened his phone again and sent out a text. Actually, he sent out two.

_To: Rey: Can’t wait to see you in a week._

_To: Anna: I love you :)_

**“Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You”**

_“So, how did you like the dinosaur museum?” Ben asked Rey as he led her to the foot of their door after their first date._

_“I liked it a lot. Thank you for taking me there.”_

_“I thought you would. You mentioned before how much you loved history.”_

_He was so thoughtful. He almost didn’t seem like a real person, but rather an angel sent from heaven just to love her._

_“I do love history. I’m glad you remembered.”_

_He smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”_

_“I guess it is. Goodbye until tomorrow.”_

_“Goodbye until tomorrow.”_

 

_Rey._

The name hurt Ben to write.

_I called Anna to help me back my bags, and I took myself out of our bank account today. I’ll be living with her now._

She was waiting at her apartment right now. He hadn’t let her be in the room with him as he wrote this letter. He needed to be alone.

_I really didn’t want to do this. I wanted to stay with you forever, to hold our children in my arms and kiss you and them with the same love. I wanted to support you and hold your hand throughout life’s journey._

It was so cliché that Ben hated himself just for writing it. It seemed almost impersonal, deliberately fake and goopy, and he knew that when Rey read it, she would think that he was just putting on a show, that he didn’t love her at all and that he was doing just fine after he left.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

_But I_ couldn’t, _Rey. We spent more time as enemies then as friends, and you seemed oblivious to it all._

Their relationship had been crumbling for a long time, maybe ever since the moment when they had first met. He wondered how long they had been faking their love.

But then he stopped. They hadn’t been faking their love at all. It just hadn’t worked out. Their personalities didn’t quite click in some way.

_I’m sorry. I wish you a good life and a good career._

And he genuinely did. Without him holding her back – he had been doing that, he realized, and dragging her along with him even when she didn’t want to go – she would succeed. He knew it.

_Goodbye, Rey._

Goodbye forever. Not until tomorrow, not until next week, not even until next year.

Forever.

_Ben Solo_


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is an alternate ending to my other Reylo fic, "Undercover," so if you want to understand it better, read that first.

When Ben went to the Valentine’s Day light show at the park, he was excited, just as he was for every single one of these events. He would never admit it to anyone, not even those closest to him, but he loved them more than he loved anything else on earth.

But this time, there was also a stillness in his heart. When he had been friends with Rey, he had learned that she loved these shows just as much as he did, but she had purposely avoided him at those shows because she didn’t want to ruin it with their usual arguments.

 _Him_ as in Ben Solo, of course, whom she hadn’t seen in forever. Not  _him_ as in Matt Driver, which was who Ben Solo was posing as, and whom she had miraculously hadn’t seen at the shows, despite his claim that he enjoyed them.

That was because he still didn’t exist. The burden of what he had done to get close to his co-worker still tore Ben apart with guilt.

She still hadn’t replied to his email of apology, but perhaps he deserved that. What he had done was a really shitty thing, and he still wasn’t even sure if he’d forgive himself were he in her place.

Still, he was saddened as he parked his car in an open spot and walked into the light show.

So many people had decided to come, bringing their family and their friends and their loved ones, and the sheer fact that he was one of the very few who had come alone made Ben impossibly sad.

He walked up to an exhibit that was filled with intertwining pink hearts that moved around, as if dancing. They were enrapturing and beautiful, and they seemed to trap him inside of them and not allow him to move away.

He saw someone move up to him, and when he looked out of the corner of one eye, he saw that it was Rey. Out of a combination of panic and modesty, Ben did not speak or move away. He didn’t want to seem even more intrusive than he already was.

She didn’t move away either, even as he saw her look at him and realize who he was. For this moment, at least, the battle between then was over.

“Hello,” she said finally, breaking the tight silence and making Ben jump slightly out of shock.

“Hello, he said back, courteously, politely.

“Lovely show, isn’t it?” she asked, now turning around to look at him.

“It really is. Very beautiful.”

She didn’t say anything now, only looked at him silently, as if she knew exactly what to say, but was trying to arrange the words into the right patterns to say it.

“I got your email,” she said finally. “It was sent from your Ben Solo account, not your Matt Driver one. I noticed that.”

Ben nodded. “I deleted that account after I left the office. I was that ashamed of it. This probably isn’t going to make a difference, but that’s what I did.”

“Thank you,” said Rey, smiling shyly. “That really means a lot to me. And do you want to know what else I’m noticing right now?”

“What?”

“You’re not trying to fight me. You’re admitting that you did a bad thing, and you’re not trying to justify yourself. Thank you for that.”

“Of course.”

Ben was glad she had noticed. He had told himself ever since the moment he had first seen her at the park that he wasn’t going to try to justify himself.

And for the first time in months, a feeling of hope filled him.

“But I just want to know,” she said, “why? Why did you do that? I’m not attacking you, I just want to know.”

The words poured out of Ben, unstoppable. “Because we've fought so much. From the moment we met, we fought. Every time we saw each other, we fought. Our relationship has been fighting and fighting and fighting, and I just wanted to break that cycle. I thought we could be a good team if we just set aside our differences and worked together, maybe even became friends. I obviously went the wrong way about it, but that was what was on my mind."

Rey’s face betrayed no emotion, and it was in that pause that Ben realized that there was more that needed to be said.

"And I was in love with you, too. I know that's a shitty justification, but I didn't want to be your enemy anymore. I just wanted to be your friend. At least. And once again, I did a shitty thing, and I understand if you don't forgive me, but I'm genuinely sorry, and I regret it all."

At the word “love,” Rey’s eyes had opened wide in shock. She looked at him, mouth ever so slightly in awe, and Ben knew that both of them knew that whatever happened now would shape the course of their lives forever.

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispered, hands digging deep into her pockets.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“I can’t forgive you, Ben. I’m sorry. I’ve had bad experiences with being lied to, and I don’t know if I can trust you after what you did. I'm sorry."

"I understand," Ben whispered softly. "I entirely understand. I don't know if I'd forgive me either."

She nodded. "Thank you for listening to me."

"Of course."

Then, they stood in silence, doing nothing but staring at the show and avoiding looking at each other, for a long, long time, until it was 10:30 by Ben's watch.

"I have to go now," he said. "I have to get up early for work tomorrow. Goodbye?"

"Goodbye."

After he left, Ben sat in his car for a while and watched her stand there. She stood at the same exhibit without moving to a different one for ten minutes, and when she finally brought herself to step to the side, she crumpled to the ground and wrenched out a sob.

Ben sighed and moved his car away. He wouldn't be able to function at his job the next day without sleep, and he wouldn't get it by thinking about lives and friendships lost.


	13. Chapter 13

"Have you ever been in New York?"

Rey was walking with Jess Pava, and they were marveling at the enormity of the city. Both had heard so much about it, but up close, everything about it surpassed even the highest of their expectations.

“No,” Jess answered truthfully. “That’s why I like being a magician. Takes me everywhere.”

Both of them were Angels, one of the circle of twelve who served the powerful mage Leia Solo and combatted forces of evil. And tonight, the newest team members were on their first official mission.

"’Supreme Leader’ Snoke has sent out some of his Demons to scout the area and plan an invasion,” Leia had explained during their debriefing. “Your job is to also scout the area and see if anything is out of the ordinary. If you see anything,  _don't try to stop it yourselves. Immediately_ send out the signal, and we’ll be right there. Okay, girls?”

“Okay.”

So now Rey and Jess were walking the streets of New York, firmly on the lookout for any of the signs of demonic activity that they had been debriefed on during their training. As they were posing as humans, they had worked out a secret code they would use if any of them spotted anything so as not to accidentally expose the magic to the public.

And, of course, so the demons didn’t suspect anything.

“I’m hungry!” Jess suddenly exclaimed, grabbing Rey’s arm pointedly. “Let’s go eat!”

“You know, I’m kind of hungry myself,” Rey said, catching on. “Is there anywhere in particular you want to go?”

“I kind of fancy Subway, actually. Oh, would you look at that, there’s one right there!”

The girls walked into the restaurant, and to avoid looking out of place, they stood in the moderately long line and waited to order. While they stood, they texted each other notes about what the source of the demonic activity could possibly be.

_Rey: The cashier, maybe? He looks weird._

_Jess: Maybe. And he’s not touching the salt, so that could maybe be why._

_Rey: Do you have your holy water? Try accidentally getting some on him when we get up to order._

_Jess: I’ll try that._

When they were finally called up, Jess “accidentally” sprinkled some of the holy water in her pocket onto the cashier’s arm while she was ordering a beef sandwich on flatbread. But nothing out of the ordinary happened at all.

“Guess not,” Rey whispered to Jess as they watched their sandwiches be prepared. “Keep looking.”

They decided to split up: Jess would watch the people in the line and the other cashiers, and Rey would wander around the tables, watching for anything suspicious. But nothing seemed out of place at all.

A man with glasses was sitting alone and reading a book, and he called Rey up to him with one finger.

“Hello?” she asked as she looked over. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to ask you what the time was. I saw that you had a watch.”

“Oh, it’s 7:34.”

“ _Shit_ ,” the man exclaimed. “I’m running late. Thank you, ma’am. I’m Ben Solo, by the way.”

He slipped a business card into her hand, and she shoved it into her pocket without looking at it. She had people selling stuff to her in every goddamn city she visited.

“The detector stopped detecting all of a sudden,” Jess whispered, sliding up to her with two sandwiches in her hands. “So it’s probably one of the people who just left. Let’s follow after them and see what we find.”

“Gotcha.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“That businessman. Ben Solo or something. He handed you his business card, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We have intel that the Demons have started giving out business card laced with Potion of Corruption. If it’s in your contact in a long time, then you’ll convert to the Dark Side of magic. Let me use the checker on the card he gave you. If it’s corrupted, we’ve got to put it in a safe bag and bring it to Leia.”

Rey took it out, holding it by one corner with the very tips of two fingers, and Jess ran it along the Corruption Tracker that each team of Angels was given. Almost instantly, it began flashing red, and the two girls looked at each other with wide eyes.

“We have to go after Solo,” Jess exclaimed.

“But Leia said that we have to report everything to her.”

“Oh.” Jess stopped in her tracks and nodded. “You’re right. She’ll murder us if we go after a suspect without telling her. Let’s call her.”

They stepped outside, and Jess pulled out her wand and began whispering the magic words to send out the signal that a Demon had been found. And then, they waited and stared up at the sky in silence.

“I’d say our first mission is going well,” Rey said lightheartedly.

“Me too. Let’s hope the others go just as well, am I right?”

They nodded at each other. “Let’s hope.”

Hours passed and passed, and still, no one arrived. Jess had double checked that the signal was working well ten times in one minute, so it wasn’t that.

“Maybe they didn’t notice it,” Jess whispered. “And right now we’re letting Demons invade New York City, and we’re not doing anything. We’re accomplices, Rey.”

“We have to go after Ben. Before anything bad happens.”

Jess passed the business card through the tracker again, and then they raced after where it was guiding them. Eventually, they got to a skyscraper, but the front of the door read, “Limited Access.”

“We’ve got this," said Jess, smirk crossing her face. "Remember our stealth training?

"Yep."

Rey reached into her bag and pulled out several powders, which she sprinkled on her partner's face and then on hers as both of them whispered the necessary magic words with their eyes closed. When they opened them, they were both businesswomen, and both of them had the ID necessary to get into the building.

"Yes, ma'am," the security guard said in a tired voice. "And ma'am. I don't know what to say when it's two women."

"I think it's ladies," Rey whispered to Jess as they walked up the stairs, following the tracker.

"That would make sense."

The duo found their way up to the rooftop, and they poked their heads out, trying not to be noticed. There, they saw the signature black cloaks of demons. Judging by the escalation of their voices, they were having an argument.

"The Angels suspect something," a voice not belonging to Ben exclaimed. "They're sending out scouts. We can't attack now. Unless you want to lose to them, Solo? You've been showing some anti-Demonic tendencies lately. We suspect things."

"I don't want to lose," Ben protested. "I promise. But maybe if we could talk things out, reason with them..."

"Solo." The voice that was not Ben's spoke again, angrier this time. "Shouldn't you know by now that we can't reason with the Angels? They are weak and unreasonable, and they don't listen to us. Not even the two that are hiding here at this very moment."

Rey and Jess looked at each other, eyes widening, and tried to dart down, but the Demon snapped his fingers and summoned them up. Almost instantly, he snapped his fingers again, forcing Jess to fall to the ground, face frozen permanently in shock.

She wasn't dead. Rey felt the connection between all Angel partners still burning inside of her. But it was still a shock, especially when the Demon guided her into his circle instead of doing the same to her.

"Hello, my little spy," he murmured, leaning close to her ear, so close that she could smell his breath. "It's a wonder we don't kill you right now. To send a message to the others. Solo, would you like to do the honors?"

Rey tightened her hand into a fist, trying her hardest to call upon the magic that was inside of her. But among a Demon, it was already weakened.

_Come on, come on, come on..._

Ben's eyes were wide as he looked at her and drew his wand out from his pocket.

"Go on, Solo," the other Demon said. "If you don't do it, I'll kill you myself."

"Allow me to say something to her first."

"Of course. Two minutes."

Ben leaned into her ear and whispered.

"Take my hand and pour your magic into me. According to the books I've read, it'll create a fusion that will wipe out evil. Please, Rey. Trust me."

He had seemed hesitant to kill her. And right now, the idea that he was proposing was her only hope at living.

So she took his hand, and she squeezed her eyes and Ben's hand tighter than she had ever squeezed them in her life, and she focused every last ounce of her energy into him, praying to everything she knew that it would work.

And just as she thought it might, her whole world went black.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't write smut don't rub it in

Ben slumped onto his couch, sighing in exhaustion. It had been a long day – no, a long _week_ – at his office job, filled with meetings and spilled coffee and annoying coworkers, and the shrieking of his upstairs neighbor’s kids wasn’t helping at all.

 _Fucking annoying squealing pieces of shit._ This was why he had never wanted kids. Or, for that matter, a steady partner.

At this point, there was only one thing that could cure his shitty mood. Technically, she was a person, but during these late-evening excursions, both of them found it hard to think of the other as that.

 _Rey._ He picked up his phone and dialed her number.

“Hello?” she asked, picking up almost instantly.

“Can you come over?”

“You have supplies, right?”

“Of course I have supplies. Can you come over?”

“Be there in a few.”

Ben began preparing his apartment. This basically consisted of changing into more revealing clothes than what he had on and freeing up the couch for them to be on it together. He didn’t bother cleaning up the mess on the floor and tables. He didn’t give a shit about what his enemy thought of him. This was just to burn off the steam of the fire that filled them both, nothing more.

During the day, they fought so much that their coworkers placed bets on when it would become physical. But little did they know that all their bets came true on late-evening Fridays in his messy apartment.

Ben heard a quick ring on the doorbell, and he instantly went to open it. Rey was wearing a jacket and tight yoga pants, and her hair cascaded down her shoulders. It was almost beautiful, and he would have admired it, perhaps, if it were anyone else.

She didn’t say anything as she pressed him against the wall, kissing him, forcing the breath out of his mouth and his body, rubbing her hands up and down his back, biting his lips to force him to comply. And _he_ didn’t say anything as he picked her up and forced her onto his couch.

She undressed him first. That was how they always did things. Her lips slid down his neck and down his chest and stomach, leaving a burning trail of Eros on his skin as she took off his boxers with nothing but her mouth.

“Don’t forget your condom,” she said to him.

“I won’t. I would never want to have a child with you.”

“Me neither.”

The first time that he had put it on, his hands had shaken violently, and even now, he could not find the reason why. Not even now, when it had become commonplace, and he put it on with nothing but stillness inside of his skin.

She watched him, mouth not moving or twitching, as she took off her jacket and yoga pants and threw them haphazardly off to side. She was wearing black lingerie – not good or high class; in fact, they looked as if she had had them for a long time.

Ben wrapped his arms around her and unhooked her bra and took her pants off with his hands. For some reason, he never felt quite right when he did it with his lips, like he did. Maybe it felt too personal, like what he would do with a girlfriend, and he didn’t want at all to have that kind of relationship with Rey.

All night, they were together. All night, the room was filled with quiet moans and grunts, at first masked by the continuous noise of the neighbor’s kids, then complementing their mother reading them a bedtime story, then the only sound in the gentle quiet of their sleep. When they finally fell asleep, completely sore and hurting with bruises, they were on opposite sides of Ben’s wide bed.

It was only she who was asleep. He, on the other hand, found sleeping impossible.

Rey was so still while she slept. She hugged her blanket tightly to her as if it were a lover, and she had a sort of mysterious smile, which he never saw at any time but this one. He would almost call it beautiful.

Something about that night, and the crescent moon shining through the window, and the stillness of the children upstairs, made Ben for a second reconsider the feelings that he firmly had about having a partner and children. And for an ever quicker second, he reconsidered the feelings that he had about Rey.

He imagined marrying her, guiding her through the ballroom in her white dress, kissing her in their bed at night, cuddling in a way that was completely chaste. He imagined truly loving her, not just as an enemy and a way to burn off steam, and drowning in the feeling of knowing that she loved him back. He imagined a future that would never happen, and in that future, he was truly happy.

It was too painful to sleep next to Rey after imagining that. So Ben took his blanket and a pillow, set his phone on the counter, and slept in the kitchen.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Mulan (which this is based on) is a Chinese story, and Rey and Ben are white, I've tried to stray from the major aspects of Chinese culture, as I didn't want to appropriate. If what's left is culturally insensitive in any way, comment on this or send me an ask over at lukassgoggles on Tumblr, and we can talk about this, and I'll change it :)

If her adventure with the matchmaker had gone successfully, and hadn’t ended in her spilling tea practically on every corner of the room, then Rey Kenobi would probably be at the house of her future betrothed.

If she hadn’t been so clumsy, so painfully unlike the other girls, then she would have spent so much time away from home that she wouldn’t have been obligated to do chores in her backyard, sneaking up to the front door to listen in occasionally. It wasn’t as if her parents were _forcing_ her to help out, but she, personally, felt obligated to, as a makeup for her earlier failure.

If Rey had followed the path that centuries of history had sculpted out for her, then she wouldn’t have heard those cruel, painful words until it was already too late.

“Our kingdom’s army is unsupplied fighting the neighboring one. It is now required for every household to send at least one male soldier to serve our great country.”

“Yes, sir,” Rey heard her father say in a frail voice, leaning on his cane and sighing softly. The image of him walking back into his house in hopeless resignation, then sitting on his bed and rereading the draft documents over and over and over again, forced tears into Rey’s widening eyes.

She picked up the hoe and worked the garden ten times harder than it needed to be worked. Then, she want back into the house and cleaned it from bottom to top, body shaking with anger, careful to go around her father’s resting form on the sofa.

“Rey, are you all right?” her mother asked her worriedly, walking up to her and placing a hand on her shoulder in concern.

For a split second, looking into her mother’s brown eyes – so exactly like her own that strangers did a double take when they saw them together – Rey considered answering truthfully. But then, her gaze unwillingly drifted back to her father, twisting on the couch in agony.

His weapons and old clothes from when he was a skilled fighter were in the basement, very much reachable, not even locked up by a key. And she was about their size and could fit in them very, very easily.

A plan began to hatch in Rey’s head, and it dried the tears streaming down her cheeks.

She nodded. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

It was a risky plan. But nothing could possibly be riskier than letting her father go to war.

The family ate their dinner in silence. Nothing could possibly express Rey’s mother’s obvious grief, or her father’s obvious fear, both of which they tried to hide for each other.

“Rey, go to bed,” her mother sighed after they cleared their plates. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Rey understood that she wasn’t just talking about chores, which they weren’t going to have much of tomorrow, actually. She and her mother always understood each other so well. Rey just hoped that she would understand why she had to leave.

 

Rey began putting her plan into place after she was sure that her parents were completely asleep. She sneaked into their room, took the documents off of her father’s desk, and left the bright yellow flower pin he had given her as a birthday gift as a wordless token of love. Then, she walked into the weapons room, reveling in the quiet whisper of her slippers on the tiled floor.

She took some scissors off of a shelf and cut her hair until it looked just like that of the boys she sometimes saw playing outside. After washing her new haircut with the basin that stood on the table and smoothing it down, she picked a brilliant green suit of armor, complete with a helmet, which looked as if it fit her somewhat. Finally, Rey grabbed a small sword that, after a couple of swings, proved light and easy to use.

Just before dawn, Rey climbed onto the family horse and drove off. It was time to do business.

 

The other soldiers who had been sent were a diverse range of people.

Some of them were old like her father, with no younger family members available to take their place. Some of them were young like her, and some even younger, shaking in fear as they looked up at the muscular, burly soldiers. Rey wanted so terribly to join them, or even to go back home and cry into her pillow, but she forced herself to squeeze her hands into balls of defiance by her side and look up at the men she did not know.

There was another, tall and mysterious, walking the ranks and peering at his soldiers, and Rey curiously asked someone beside her who he was, because he wore several stars on his armor, and he seemed important.

“That’s Captain Ben Solo, idiot,” the guy beside her said, whacking her lightly on the ear. “Son of General Solo. Can we really expect you to serve the army if you don’t know that?”

“Shut up,” Rey snapped up at him.

“What’s your name, anyway? Haven’t heard from you.”

Rey scrambled to come up with one. “Adam. My name is Adam Kenobi. Who’re you?”

“Armitage Hux.”

“Never heard of Kenobi having a _son,_ ” a voice behind them said. When they turned around, they saw that it was Ben Solo himself, peering at the duo curiously. “I think I might’ve heard some talk of a daughter, but not a son.”

“Rey is my twin sister,” Rey explained, heart beating with panic. “My father keeps me inside because I’m a weak failure and a dishonor to the family. He sent me in his place because he’s old and ailing.”

Part of that was true, Rey couldn’t help but think. Perhaps it would make her lie even more believable.

“We don’t want failures here,” Captain Solo snapped, whacking her upside the head. “So with me, you’re going to shape up or leave. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rey didn’t need to be the best soldier her kingdom had ever seen. She only needed to be satisfactory enough to take her father’s place until the war with the neighboring kingdom was over.

 

On the very first day, Captain Solo posed Rey and the rest of her regiment a challenge: Swim across the moat bordering the castle to get the arrow that he had shot. Everyone was told to try, and everyone failed and needed Captain Solo to swim over on his boat to save them.

“Well,” he conceded, “that was a bit too hard for most of you. How about you just run across that field. See how that turns out.”

That, too was a failure. The field was a mile long, and the fastest time that anyone had managed was fifteen minutes.

The captain sighed and buried his face in his hands when he saw the results.

“We’re going to have a lot of work to do.”

 

Solo was, without a doubt, both the best and the worst captain that the team could have gotten.

He woke them up before sunrise and forced them to run and carry weights before they could eat breakfast. The entire day was crammed with training for speed and stealth and strength, something that he called “the Three S’s” and that they apparently needed to master before they could even set _foot_ on the battlefield.

The other men – and boys, for that matter – in the regiment picked it up quickly due to being trained at home. But Rey, who had only ever been taught to sit still and look pretty and do chores and bear children, found herself lagging far, far behind, to the point that even the people who were somewhat nice to her, Finn Skywalker and Poe Dameron, found themselves losing patience, and Armitage Hux screamed his throat hoarse every evening at dinnertime.

Finally, in a fit of frustration, Solo came up to her and looked her in the eye.

“Go home, Kenobi.”

“Huh?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

 _I can’t go home. I_ can’t.

“I said, _go home._ You can’t pick up basic skills, and you’ll be a hindrance on the battlefield, nothing more. I told you when you first came that I wouldn’t have failures here. Start packing up, and you’ll leave in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Rey watched Captain Solo walk into his tent and fall asleep. And then, she stripped down to her underclothes and stepped into the moat.

It was freezing in the late night, but Rey gritted her teeth and toughed it out. She made long strokes, making sure to breathe deeply so as not to wear herself out too quickly – how had she not noticed that that was the others had been doing for so long? – and paddled her feet quickly and efficiently.

Rey must have spent an hour, maybe more, swimming that moat. And even though, by the middle, she began to feel tired, she ignored the burning feeling inside of her and kept swimming.

Finally, by dawn, she made it to the other end and grabbed the arrow. She looked across the water, and she saw her entire regiment clapping and grinning. Captain Solo, standing in front, looked the proudest of all.

 

Everything seemed to go uphill after that. Rey fronted her teammates in almost every task, she received praise from even the prickly Armitage, and for the first time in many, many years, she felt as if her life had some sort of purpose.

Rey still had to hide her true identity. If she were found out, the penalty, which hung over her like a blade, ready to drop at any moment, was death.

Their first battle was only a couple of weeks later, and Captain Solo announced that Rey – or _Adam Kenobi,_ as he called her – would be his second-in-command, and that if he were to die or get injured, the troops were to answer to her. This they did willingly, because they admired her, and they would rather follow her than anyone else.

“Good luck, Adam,” Captain Solo said the night before, patting her on the back and smiling. “I know you’ll do great.”

“Thank you, sir. Good luck to you, too.”

Finn, Poe, Armitage, and Rey spent the night in their camps, playing cards and laughing and talking about how amazing it was that they were heading into battle for the very first time. And once again, Rey realized that every word of theirs was masking intense fear.

 

The next day, it seemed at first that everything would be okay. Captain Solo split the group into three to surround the army of the neighboring kingdom, and every group – headed by himself, Rey, and Armitage – had very specific directions about what to do.

But then, Rey watched Captain Solo’s group be overtaken, and she watched their army dwindling, neighbors approaching dangerously close to storm the capital. A helpless feeling filled her; she knew that she had to do something, but she still wasn’t sure at all what.

The army looked at her for leadership, and her friends smiled encouragingly, watching and waiting to see what she would do. And then, she had an idea.

“A small group led by me,” she whispered, still speaking loudly enough so that they would hear her, “will circle back and take fireworks to make it seem as if we’re regrouping there and storming their base. Meanwhile, the rest of you will go and defend the capital. All right?”

“All right.”

Rey took Finn, Poe, Armitage, and a couple of other soldiers into the mountains and to the base. They waited patiently, only sneaking around, and then-

“STOP! THEY’RE HERE!”

The enemy fell upon them, and the army scattered, throwing fireworks specifically into the mountains, running away once they heard the first signs of the snow falling. Rey didn’t even realize that an arrow had pierced her gut until after they had escaped, and the rest of the army stood there, watching and grinning in awe.

“Good job, Adam,” Captain Solo said, walking up to her and hugging her before realizing that she was injured and stepping back in alarm.

“ _Adam!_ ” he shrieked, eyes widening. “Adam, we need to get you patched up! I have a first aid kit right here, give me a little bit.”

Rey felt herself growing weaker, and Finn caught her as she fell back and Solo began to undress her.

“Now we just apply this serum here, and that should treat you – _Wait._ ”

Solo looked at her naked body with bewilderment.

“You’re not a man. You’re a _woman._ ”

Rey began shaking in panic. So now was when she died.

“Please, Captain,” she pleaded. “I just saved you.”

“Please!”

Armitage was the first to begin fighting for her, then Finn and Poe and the other soldiers.

“She saved us all!”

“She’s _brilliant!_ ”

“I don’t care if she’s a woman, I only care about what she did!”

“Captain, you _can’t!_ ”

“ _ENOUGH!_ ”

Captain Solo took out his sword, silencing them all.

“ _I can,_ ” he said, anger and sadness choking his voice as he shook, squeezing his eyes shut to hide the tears, “ _and I will._ ”

He swung the sword down. The screams of her fellow soldiers, and the whimper escaping the captain’s throat, was the last thing that Rey ever heard.


	16. Chapter 16

Ben Solo was sitting on his bed, brushing his hair while looking into a small handheld mirror, when his parents walked into the room, his mother holding a letter in her hand and smiling.

“Hello, Mother. Hello, Father.”

“Ben,” Lady Solo said, sitting next to him and peering at his reflection, “we came in to tell you that you have another suitor. She came to the house yesterday while you were in the woods and asked us to let you see her.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know?” Ben asked, putting the mirror on his nightstand and sighing.

He didn’t say what the mysterious suitor didn’t know. He didn’t need to.

“I don’t know if she does or if she doesn’t,” Ben’s father burst in. “You can tell her when you see each other for the first time.”

Ben shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Do you know what they call people like me in books?” he asked, staring at the wall in front of him and taking a long, deep breath.

Ben took their silence and still, blank faces as an invitation to continue, squeezing his blue bedspread to keep himself from crying.

“’Traitorous beasts.’ They call us traitorous beasts, and they kill us while we’re human and cut our bodies up into little pieces and bury them in the soil as far away from each other as they can. I can’t accept her advances, Dad. No one could ever love a werewolf.”

Without a word, without even so much as a warning, Ben’s parents leaned close to him and wrapped him in their embrace, squeezing his tears out and coming close to drying them.

“Ben,” Lord Solo murmured into his ear. “You say that no one could ever love a werewolf, but I’ve loved you for twenty-seven years. And so has your mother.”

“We’d never kick you out of the home just because of what you are,” Lady Solo added. “Never. And I can name you so many others who accept you just like us.”

“So give her a chance, okay, Ben? Remember, you can always refuse if you want to. _Always._ ”

Ben took another breath, deep and strained. And then he nodded.

“All right. But I’m telling her the truth on the very first date. If she reacts badly, then…that’s her problem, not mine.”

“Okay,” Lord Solo said, patting Ben on the shoulder. “I’ll go send a letter to her father.”

“What’s her name, by the way?” Ben asked as soon as he stood up to leave.

“Rey. Rey Kenobi.”

 

_Pleased to meet you, Lady Rey Kenobi. My name is Ben Solo, and I’m a werewolf._

Ben rehearsed what he was going to say as he took the short walk from his manor to hers, each word both a step of his foot and a beat of his heart, until all three were racing like the wind in a heavy storm.

_Pleasedtomeetyou,LadyReyKenobi.MynameisBenSolo,andI’mawerewolf._

Ben didn’t care if she wanted to marry him or not. Ever since he understood what a werewolf was – a perfectly natural condition or the mark of the Devil, depending on who you asked – and why he was one – no one knew – marriage was the last thing on his mind.

So why was he so nervous?

He knocked the brass knocker of the wooden door three times, and a servant answered with a polite smile and guided him inside.

“Lady Kenobi is in the parlor with tea and biscuits. She’ll be happy to see you, I’m sure.”

Ben walked into the room, looking at the food as he began the words he had rehearsed for so long.

“Pleased to meet you, Lady Rey Kenobi. My name is Ben Solo, and-”

The words got stuck in his throat as he looked at her. She was so much more beautiful than he had been preparing himself for, with tanned skin, short brown hair that he desperately wanted to run his hands through, and soft freckles all over her face that brought the word “cute” to his mind.

“…and?” she prompted, looking up at him and smiling.

In that moment, Ben realized that he was in love, _true_ love, for what was probably the first time in his life. And also in that moment, the words that he had said to his parents only a couple of days before came back to him in a flash.

_No one could ever love a werewolf._

The stakes were changed. He now cared, _painfully_ cared, whether or not she loved him back.

“…and I’m really happy to meet you. How are you today, my lady?”

“I’m doing fine, how are you? Why don’t you sit down? I baked these cookies myself. Your mother told me that you liked cinnamon.”

“Well, she was right. Thank you for baking them.”

Ben sat down and poured himself and Rey some tea. Maybe he would tell her the truth, later, when they knew. But not today. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her today.

 

He came to her nearly every day, and sometimes she to him. And on days when both were busy, they would write each other letters and send them through servants. It was the happiest time in Ben’s life, and the secret that he still hadn’t told her was only a speck in the back of his mind.

There was only one moment that was happier than whenever he opened his mailbox and learned that he had gotten a letter from her, and that was when he came to her parents’ house and asked them for her hand and got a “Yes.”

“You treat our daughter kindly,” Lord Kenobi said, a smile twinkling in his eyes. “Of course we will say yes.”

 

They were married on a night without a moon, which was chosen specifically by Ben while the two were planning it, sitting on her couch wrapped under a blanket and cuddling. He wanted the worst part of his life to be as far away as possible from the best. And it was half a month after that that Ben first chained himself up in the basement of her manor and waited for his transformation.

The door opened, and Ben jumped in surprise and tried to hide himself from whoever it was.

“Ben?”

It was Rey. The worst possible outcome.

He felt his senses tingling, and he knew that the transformation would begin soon.

“Rey, go back to sleep. I’ll explain tomorrow.”

“Why not now? I’m curious.”

“Rey, please.”

“Ben, my love, I’m worried about you. Are you okay?”

“If I explain now, will you go back to sleep?”

“Fine.”

She seemed hurt, and Ben reached a hand out and placed it on her shoulder.

“I’m a werewolf. And tonight’s a full moon, and I’m going to turn. At home, I have a shack in the woods, but now that we live in our own manor, I don’t.”

Rey didn’t look shocked at all, only bewildered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, dear. I loved you, ever since I saw you, and I didn’t think that you could ever love a werewolf. I didn’t think that _anyone_ could ever love a werewolf.”

Rey stuck her chin out and went to him. “Well, _I_   __love a werewolf. And I don’t care that he is one.”

She kissed him on the lips, and Ben kissed her briefly back, but then he pushed her away.

“The transformation should be happening soon. See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow. I’ll come here with your favorite breakfast, all right?”

“All right.”

She moved to leave, but Ben called her name again.

“Rey.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Just before he could hear her response, everything went black. And Ben knew by the rip of the wall behind him that the chains in the manor basement were not strong enough to bind him.

 

The next morning, Ben awoke in a ruined castle. And the first thing he saw once he managed to find his way to his bedroom was Rey, torn apart and bloody.


	17. Chapter 17

Rey sat at her desk, taking sips of black coffee and checking her emails. There was nothing out of the ordinary that needed to be taken care of, and her police division’s current projects were already overbooked by a large margin.

It was nice to have an unofficial day off. She liked to take her partner, Ben Solo, on trips around the city then, and they took turns with who decided where to eat and who decided where to go.

“Ben!” Rey hissed, leaning into the cubicle next to her.

“What’s up?” he asked aloud, not caring about the silent coworkers around them.

He didn’t care about a lot of things. It was part of what Rey liked about him.

“Since we don’t have anything important to do, want to go into the city?”

“Oh, _hell_ yes. I still need to beat your record in the arcade games.”

Rey held up a finger. “First of all, you’ll _never_ beat my record in the arcade games. Second of all, it’s _my_ turn to pick where we go, not yours. And I’m kind of in a Smithsonian mood.”

“Well, then, for _me,_ we’re going to that one café you always complain about. You’re driving, since you’re the one who suggested it, and I’ll go tell the boss we’re leaving.”

“Don’t forget your phone.”

“I won’t.”

Rey took her purse and waited for Ben in her car, cleaning up some of the clutter on the floor in the meantime. She was so comfortable with him after knowing him for three years that she didn’t feel the need to clean up all of it, only enough that he didn’t think she was a slob. And just before he came in, Rey thought about just how much she loved being with him.

“Bossman gave us a huge thing of Cheez-Its that expire tomorrow,” said Ben, straining under its largeness as he got into the front passenger’s seat.

Rey shifted the gear into reverse to back out of the parking lot and looked behind her. “Why?”

“He says we’re the only team that can eat all of them in one day. So, are you up for the challenge?”

“If I ever say no to that, just shoot me.”

They were driving down a long stretch of road now, so she took a handful of Cheez-Its and ate them one by one.

Along the way, Rey saw a sign that informed her and Ben that the road was closed due to “bovine difficulties” but would reopen fairly soon if they were willing to wait a little.

“Cows?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “In DC?”

“Want to take a look? There’s a 7/11 right here where we can park.”

“Sure.”

Ben and Rey took the box of Cheez-Its and two fold-up chairs from her trunk and parked themselves on the sidewalk in front of the procession. The cows were big, all female and brown with white spots, and they mooed violently as they were ushered across the street.

Ben giggled and pointed to the biggest one.

“That’s you,” he said through a mouthful of Cheez-Its. “You make that same exact noise when I need to wake you up.”

“Well, then, you’re that herder guy. Because you always push me before it’s time.”

Rey once read a quote that said that true love was dancing in the middle of your living room at night to a slow song playing from one of your Spotify playlists. But to her, true love would always be watching cows cross the street in DC while you eat Cheez-Its with your police agent partner.

Maybe it wasn’t requited love. Honestly, she knew that it probably wasn’t. But with Ben, she didn’t entirely care.

 

In about fifteen minutes, the “bovine difficulties” were cleared up, and Ben and Rey could continue on their way to the Smithsonian. As they were leaving the car, Rey’s phone rang, and she turned the car back on and picked it up.

“Hello?” she asked when she saw that it was her boss.

“Rey. Ben. I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s a drug bust on the other side of the city. We need backup quickly, and you’re the only two available. Can you come?”

“We can come.”

Rey mouthed the words _drug bust_ at her partner, and he nodded and got into the driver’s seat. He was always the designated driver during these kinds of things due to his willingness to drive as quickly as was needed. She hopped into the front passenger seat, hanging up her phone and fiddling with her hands to calm her worries.

“I have a stress ball in my bag,” Ben told her. “You look like you need it.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Always.”

Rey squeezed the pear-shaped ball so tightly that it almost popped, gritting her teeth in an attempt to relax. Ben leaned over and placed a hand on her wrist.

“Hey. It’s going to be okay. We’ve done things like this before, remember?”

“I remember. But it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.”

Ben nodded. “I understand. Do you want to play the relaxing playlist on my Spotify?”

“I want something really upbeat. Like really hardcore rap.”

“Gotcha.”

Ben pulled up his rap playlist, and Rey tried to rap along, but she stumbled over the words and laughed at herself. That made her feel better, especially when Ben joined her in trying – and failing – to rap.

Before she knew it, they were at the place that their boss had mentioned, and Ben took Rey’s hand as they sneaked over, weapons on hand in case they needed them. From what they were registering of the commotion going on in the abandoned building, it was more dangerous than anything that they had ever experienced.

Ben shuddered, and Rey squeezed his hand so tightly that it hurt even her.

“It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “I’m here. And we can always call for backup if we need to.”

“I know. But still.”

They kept sneaking along, listening for a place where they could walk in as safely as possible, and also deciding whether it was safer to call for backup or go for it on their own.

“Ben,” Rey whispered, just as they were outside the door.

“Yeah?”

“We might die tonight. I just realized that.”

“I know. We might die every time we do something dangerous. But we never have.”

“But we might. They’re getting intense in there.”

Ben sighed. “Rey, you’re technically right, but you’re making me nervous, talking like that. And you’re making yourself nervous, too. And when we’re nervous, we don’t perform as well as we would have. And that makes us even more likely to die. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“I didn’t mean to make you nervous. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say something I’ve always wanted to say. Just in case we _do_ die.”

“It’s okay. What is it?”

Rey fiddled with her shirt, and Ben took her hand so that she could squeeze it.

“I’m in love with you,” she burst out, trying to say it genuinely, hiding any fear that she was harboring. “This is, like, the worst time to say it, but I am. And I know you probably don’t feel the same way, but I wanted to say it. So if we _do_ die, at least you know.”

“Rey…” Ben murmured, running his hand along her face. “I…I _do_ feel the same way. I never imagined that you…”

He kissed her on the forehead, quickly but deeply, and then he took her hand and led her to the door.

“Should we go in?” Rey asked.

“Let’s just do it. We’re armed, and if anything happens, we can call for backup.”

“Gotcha.”

Rey banged on the door, opening it instantly.

“This is the police!” she shouted. “We are armed, and-”

She was cut off by a gunshot. But it didn’t hit her. And she knew by the collapse of her partner to her side that something was wrong.

 _Ben!_ she wanted to yell, but the words were stuck in her throat, refusing to come out.

“Get the hell out of here,” a voice came from the group inside of the building. “We don’t want no cops here.”

Rey picked Ben up and carried him outside, frantically pressing the button to call for backup as she did so.

“Ben,” she whispered, hands shaking so badly that she could barely feel for a pulse. “Ben, please tell me you’re alive, _please, please, please-_ “

Finally, she managed to steady herself enough to check his wrist. And it was lifeless.

Tears pooled in her eyes as she carried him to the police car that had just sped up.

“I can’t help you guys,” she whispered, grief choking her voice. “I’m sorry. I need to carry him somewhere.”

They understood but said nothing. Rey placed him in the backseat of her car and drove.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is loosely based on the game Town of Salem, which is really dope and can be played at blankmediagames.com/TownOfSalem. I absolutely love it, but I'm taking a break from it until my birthday on May 28 because I have a huge addiction to it, and I need to finish up school with as few distractions as possible.

When Ben and his four teammates arrived into the new country, he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. After all, he had only been the leader for a short time, and although he would never admit it to the people who depended on him to succeed, he was terrified.

Through blackmail from Katherine, his newest and yet most knowledgeable member, they obtained a small house from which they could perform operations.

Gwendoline, who went only by the name Phasma, spied on the dynamics in the city and brought everything back to the team. Robert quickly worked his way up to the inner circle of the country’s leader, plotting how to overthrow her. Katherine was their blackmailer, or in some rare cases their briber. And Armitage was the team’s trained killer.

Ben found himself growing used to their operations with time. The tipping point came when he began thinking of the leader, a woman known only as the Lady, as a dictator who ruled the people unfairly against their own will, and of his mafia – if it could really be thought of as such – as a group of dissatisfied citizens looking for change.

They spent _years_ in that little kingdom. And finally, Phasma and Robert came home with important news.

“The Lady is ill,” Robert said, “She’ll be vulnerable for the next week or so. Do you guys think we can finalize our plan in that time?”

Phasma nodded in agreement. “I’ve noticed that the people are finally revolting and realizing that their ruler isn’t a good one. They’ll be more willing to accept a shift in powers if we act now.”

It was, in fact, the perfect time to overthrow the Lady. And that was why young Rey Kenobi, with a tangled mess of hair and bright, glimmering eyes, volunteered to join their movement.

“I realized what Robert was when I saw him passing a note to Phasma as he walked out of the castle,” Rey explained to Ben when the group was having a secret meeting in their basement. “Then, I confronted him about it, and he was forced to tell me under threat of treason charges. As soon as he told me that he was planning to overthrow the Lady, I signed on.”

“She’s a dictator,” Katherine remarked, sitting at her desk and organizing her papers of information.

“She is,” Ben agreed, smiling at the newcomer. “Welcome to the team.”

Rey nodded. “I’m glad to be here.”

 

The next couple of days were a flurry of activity, during which the entire team was busier than they had ever been in their lives. And eventually, a plan was worked out.

In the middle of the night, the entire team except for Phasma would head towards the castle, and Katherine would blackmail the night guard into letting them in. Then, Armitage would kill anyone he needed to, while Robert and Rey would lead the team into the Lady’s chambers, where they would imprison her and lead her to the secret passageway in the back of the castle, where Phasma would be waiting to lead her to a secret place in the city that she told to absolutely no one.

They had at first wanted to kill her, but then decided against it, as it was very probable that they could use her for blackmail, and if the people demanded it, then they could execute her in public.

 

On the night before the team was to do their duty, Ben was pacing his room nervously until a knock on the door came, and he opened it. Rey was there, comforting smile on her face.

“Nervous?” she asked him, and he nodded.

“I’ve never done anything like this before. I haven’t even been the leader for that long. I don’t know how I’m going to manage.”

“You _will_ manage,” Rey said, patting him on the shoulder. “I believe in you. And remember, you’re not doing this alone. We’re here with you.”

“Yes, but what if I fail and disappoint everyone?”

“You won’t. I promise. Want to go over the plan to calm your nerves?”

Rey sat in Ben’s room, and together they went over the whole plan that they had come up with, discussing every what-if that was on Ben’s mind. And by the time it was time for both of them to go to bed, Ben felt better than he had in a long time.

“Thanks, Rey,” he told her genuinely as she moved to leave. “That really helped.”

“Any time.”

 

The next day, everything in the plan seemed to be going perfectly. Everyone was where they needed to be, and the team was approaching the Lady’s chambers completely undetected under Rey’s leadership. Ben felt a rush of adrenaline as Rey unlocked the door and swung it open, and he leaned over her shoulder…

…only to find that there was no one there.

“Huh?” he asked loud. He was so focused on looking around the room, checking for any hidden compartments where people could be waiting, that he didn’t notice Rey talking into a secret device on her shoulder.

“Finn, Poe, seize them.”

Before Ben or anyone on his team could react, two men jumped out of the ceiling tiles and handcuffed them to the wall. All of them stood frozen in fear and confusion, looking at each other with nothing but their eyes moving, not understanding where exactly the plan had gone wrong.

All of them but Rey.

“Trying to imprison me?” she asked, leaning into Ben’s face and smirking. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your scheming? You were about as subtle as an elephant in a child’s room.”

“We knew your plan ever since the very start,” one of the men, whose nametag identified him as Finn, laughed.

“While you were scheming to overthrow our friend, we were scheming to stop you,” the other, apparently Poe, added. “We were just better at it.”

Ben’s eyes widened in shock. “ _You’re_ the Lady? How are  _you_ a tyrannical dictator? You just seemed like…” He trailed off, not knowing the right word to finish his thought.

“That’s because I  _am,_ ” Rey interrupted, squeezing her hands into fists. “I  _had been_ told that I was tyrannical by peasant revolts, but I held a meeting with some of their chosen representatives, and we came to a compromise. All of this happened in the earliest stages of your plots to overthrow me. Apparently, your information gatherer – Phasma, if I’m not mistaken – didn’t notice that the people loved me now.

“I came to them and told them that there were people trying to kill me and take power in my place. They staged plans to mislead you with false information about how the time was ripe for revolution, and in the meantime, I collected information about you from the inside and fed it to my friends here. They would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them.”

“You could have just taken the peasants’ example, you know,” said Finn. “The Lady was always open for discussion. But it’s too late now.”

Rey reached behind a curtain and rang a bell, explaining while she did so that she was calling for the guards to take them to prison.

“You’ll have a trial, of course,” she said, “with a citizen-appointed jury. But the best you’ll get under such charges is life in prison.”

Neither Rey, nor Finn, nor Poe, noticed as Katherine felt around in her shoe for the secret button to send a message to Phasma. This was a feature that had been thought up while Rey was away doing other business, and the whole team was realizing at the same time that they had forgotten to tell her.

Armitage and Robert moved to cover Katherine as she worked, but Ben stayed still, torn between everything he had once believed and everything that Rey was telling him now.

And then, it was nothing more than a race against time, and the team could only hope that Phasma could make it up to the room before the royal guards. Judging by the sudden breakdown of the door, and the instant collapse of Poe and then Finn to tranquilizer darts, they had succeeded.

Phasma began uncuffing the team, working quickly.

"We have to kill the Lady," said Armitage. "Ben, I left my gun with you. Can you do it?"

"Of course."

But it wasn't such an easy question.

Ben, biting his lip, shot her through the head in a flash. Neither he nor she even had time to say a word.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for portrayal of rape and abuse. Stay safe, you guys :)

“And a flower crown around your head, dear. You must look your best for the day you are to be married.”

Rey sat a chair in front of the mirror, glaring at her own reflection, face already covered in makeup that was supposed to “complement” her. The dress that she had been given was too small, too scratchy, made for some kind of ideal woman who was thin, petite, and perfect.

A woman was dancing around the room, beaming with delight as she looked around for accessories and jewelry. She was not Rey’s mother. She had given birth to her, seventeen years ago, and they had the same last name, and they lived together in the same house, but Rey had stopped thinking of her as her mother, and of her father as her father, a couple of months ago. Ever since the moment when they had first decided that she was to marry the man she hated most of all.

 

Everyone thought that she and James made a perfect match. He was smart, beautiful, and rich, and the whole time that the marriage was being arranged, he came to her house and brought her flowers and kissed her softly on the cheek. And at the very beginning, she had loved him with all of her heart, and it had seemed to her that he had loved her, too.

But then, she started coming to _his_ house, which was largely empty, as he was an orphan who had built himself up from nothing. And there, she saw that his princely costume was nothing more than a magician’s disguise.

“Hello, James,” she had said the very first time they had met like this.

She touched her wrist in memory, biting her lip to keep from crying. She didn’t want to expose her weakness to the woman who was not her mother.

“Rey. It’s lovely to see you. Come here, I’ve laid out tea and cookies for you. Will you have some with me?”

“Of course.”

They ate, facing each other on the coffee table in his living room, and James talked about his life at home, occasionally waving a hand to emphasize a point. The other hand grabbed the tea and cookies at an alarming rate, and Rey was so engaged in conversation that she didn’t notice how somewhere in the middle of the conversation, his fingers began slowly sliding up her leg, slipping under her dress.

“No,” Rey had said sternly, scooting away slightly. “We’re not married yet. It’s not right.”

James had suddenly and violently stood up, spilling the cups and the cookies all over the floor and her, ignoring her screams as she was tortured by the scalding liquid burning her skin and the shards of porcelain digging into her. Without saying a word, he picked the table up and whacked her with it across the table, over and over and over again.

“You do as I say,” he hissed, leaning down into her face. “I’m the man, and you’re the woman.”

Ignoring her sobs, he pulled her up and jerked her roughly on the couch.

“If you clean this mess up and then make me dinner,” he snapped, “I’ll think about letting you marry me. Otherwise…”

Rey nodded. “Yes, of course.”

She did it all without a word of protest. She had seen how awful James could be, and she didn’t want any of that to happen again.

 

As soon as she had gone home, she had run to her parents, tears streaming down her cheeks, and told them all about it. She wailed into her mother’s shoulder, begging for the marriage to be cancelled, but instead of hugging her back and promising that everything was going to be okay, her mother pushed her off of her and walked to the side.

“Rey, have you seen our bank account?” she asked, anger already lacing her voice.

“You’re talking about our _bank account?_ I’m about to marry a man who just beat me up with a table!”

Rey was still shaking, but this time there was anger inside of her, not just fear.

“We’re running out of money. And James can easily provide for us. Would you rather we starve, or you not marry someone who disciplined you?”

 _He did more than discipline,_ Rey wanted to cry out. _He hurt me. I’m scared of him. I don’t want to see him again._

“Behave around him,” Rey’s mother – though it was around this time that she was declining from that position – said sternly. “Otherwise, you’ll bring our family to ruin. And you don’t what that to happen, do you, dear daughter?”

 _I’m not your daughter._ “Fine.”

“Good girl,” she said absentmindedly. “Now make dinner, will you?”

“Yes, Mother.”

_You’re not my mother. And you never will be._

 

Her wedding dress had long sleeves. It had been specifically picked out to hide her bruises.

 

After the wedding, James took her to his house to consummate their marriage. He made her bleed, painfully and brutally, and he didn’t seem to care when she worked up the courage to point this out.

_You’ll bring our family to ruin. You’ll bring our family to ruin._

_Behave around him._

And she did. It was only during a trip into the city, when James was away doing business, that she allowed herself to let go.

Rey put on her favorite dress, a beautiful green flowy thing that she hadn’t worn at all since her wedding, and she went to her favorite café and ordered a croissant and a cup of hot chocolate. She sipped it while sitting at a table alone, and she hardly noticed when a man asked her if he could sit with her.

“Yes, of course,” she said absentmindedly. “Of course you can sit here.”

“Awesome. I’m Ben Solo, by the way. And you?”

 _Rey Kenobi,_ she was going to answer, before she remembered. “Rey Palmer. So, what brings you here to this café?”

“Just a bit of coffee before I go to work. I’m always tired in the morning unless I have it.”

Rey saw that his coffee was black, and she laughed slightly.

“What about you?” he asked her.

“My husband is away doing business, so I thought I’d stop by here.”

This was good. She had brought her husband into the equation, so he wouldn’t say later that she had been leading him on. It was good and safe, good and safe, good and safe, good and-

“What do you like to do in your free time?” he asked.

“I like to cook and clean and serve my husband,” she rattled off, not at all honestly. The real truth was that she hadn’t really had the time – or freedom – to do anything else.

“Really? You didn’t strike me as the type of woman who would enjoy that and nothing but.”

“Well, I am.”

Before her wedding, Rey had loved spending time in the outdoors: climbing trees, going on long hikes, and running around in grassy fields. She also liked to sew dresses for herself and her friends, spend long amounts of time reading interesting books, and just generally have fun and be the young woman she really was. But now, she was lucky if James let her go into the city to buy groceries at the farmer’s market.

“Rey, are you all right?” Ben asked, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Like, with your husband? Because I hate to assume things about others’ relationships, but it doesn’t seem like it.”

Rey exhaled, long and sadly.

“No, not at all. You’re the first one who’s understood without me saying it.”

And then, she pulled up her sleeve and showed him her bruises.

Ben gasped. “Oh, Rey, I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

Rey had the sudden urge to kiss him. So she did, quickly and briefly on the cheek.

“Can I come over to your house?” she asked him. “For just one night? This can’t be a long-time thing, of course, and I’m sorry if you want that, but…”

Ben nodded. “Of course you can come over.”

They walked to his house, holding hands, and he placed her gently on the bed and undressed her, softly and slowly, kissing her in between every motion. It seemed as if it took hours just for them to crawl under the covers naked.

He was so soft, so kind, asking for permission before he touched her every time. Rey a long time ago would find it annoying, screaming at him to hurry up every time he did it; Rey now loved it, and loved him, and the realization drove a knife into her soul.

“I love you,” she murmured anyway, watching him squeeze her into the bed tightly.

“I know.”

 

She spent all night at his house. And when she fell asleep in his arms, she was so blissful that she didn’t notice the breaking of the door.

“This is James Palmer!” a voice screamed from behind it. “Explain why you’re with my wife, please!”

Rey and Ben jumped up, speaking over each other, voices escalating, aimed not at each other but at their shared enemy. Rey’s heart beat with panic at first, but then it slowed into a kind of acceptance, all the energy that she had been experiencing molding into bravery.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore, James,” she said, voice coming out louder and angrier than she had aimed for it to be. “Get away from me and Ben.”

She kept walking towards him, hands in fists.

“What are you going to do, beat me up?” he asked derisively.

“Yes.”

And then she punched him squarely in the face.

James began to fight back, but she was stronger on her rush of adrenaline, hitting him everywhere she knew it would hurt, coming close, so close, to killing him. Until he reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

 _What is it?_ Her vision had gone so red she couldn’t see. The only thing she knew what the firing of a gunshot behind her, then a scream of panic and of fear.

It wasn’t her own. But the next one was.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so behind on my word count hECC

Ben Solo was the most targeted man in his home of the United States of America. In his briefcase, which at first glance appeared to contain nothing more than the simple papers of a businessman, were hidden the secret codes of the FBI, which were desired by every high-level criminal in the country. The only way to get them was to either kill him or disable him permanently.

Ben Solo knew about exactly none of this, and if he was told, he would be immensely confused as to how he even got them in the first place. His life was little more than daily trades on Wall Street, and he didn’t want to get involved in high government. Not at all.

So when Ben walked into a coffee shop on the morning before an important meeting, sipping a latte and eating a donut while reading the news, he was completely unaware that from the moment that he stepped in, a plot began to take his life.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice above him said suddenly, snapping him out of the news story about the president’s latest antics.

“Oh, hi.”

He looked up at her and took her in, face full of freckles and soft brown hair, smile splitting her face wide open.

“Can I sit here? There’s a creep following me around, and I think he’ll leave me alone if he thinks I’m with someone. Or, at least, I _hope_ so.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Ben slid a chair out for her and leaned across the small table to make it seem like they were engaged in deep conversation.

“I’m Ben, by the way,” he said. “Ben Solo.”

“Rey Kenobi.”

Something seemed to flash in her eyes when he said his name, but after a second’s thought, he dismissed it as just his imagination. He couldn’t think of a single way in which his name could be even remotely recognizable.

“Have you drank that coffee yet?” she asked, gesturing at the cup in front of him.

“Um, no. It’s still too hot. I’ve been eating this donut that I brought from home, though. It’s not too-”

Suddenly, Rey’s hand swiped in a sharp motion across the table, knocking the cup down and shattering it into tiny pieces on the floor.

“What the fuck?” he asked, clenching his hands into fists under the table to keep his face from furrowing in anger.

“Oh, sorry,” she began to say. “My mis-”

_Bang!_

Ben looked around for the source of the sound, but he didn’t need to do so for long; the cashier behind the counter was holding a gun in his hand, pointed directly at him. And Rey was lying on the table, gritting her teeth, bleeding out from a wound just below her chest.

It only took a couple of seconds for Ben to realize something else: Rey had taken the bullet for him.

Ben’s hands reached for his phone, ready to dial 911, struggling to do anything because of how badly they were shaking. Meanwhile, Rey stood up, barely affected by the bullet inside of her, and tackled the cashier who had shot him, grunting something into what seemed to be a walkie-talkie.

When Rey stood up and waddled to him again, he was in the middle of a phone call.

“A cashier just shot at me,” he said, voice weak and soft, body trembling like a child’s in the cold. “And a woman saved me. She has him handcuffed now.”

“Very well. What is the café’s name?”

Ben named it, pressing the phone to one ear with his shoulder as he situated Rey into a comfortable position. The operator announced that medical services, as well as a police force, would be there soon, and then, the line ended with a haunting _click._

“I guess I ought to explain some things,” Rey said, laughing softly.

“If it’s going to waste your energy, don’t. I can live without an explanation until you get better.”

Rey shook her head. “I’ve survived worse than this. I’ll live.”

“All right, then.”

“I’m an undercover agent for the FBI. If you don’t believe me, check my bag. I have my ID there.”

“I believe you. Keep going. Why were they targeting _me?_ And who even are _they?”_

“Well, you see, we were handing off our most important papers to a high-level government official with a very similar name to you. I won’t disclose it with that guy in the corner over there-” she jerked a thumb over to the handcuffed cashier- “but it’s _very_ similar to yours.

“Somewhere along the way, I guess things got mixed up. And the papers went to you. And spies of criminals who want to take down our government heard about it, and they began to target you to try and retrieve the papers.

“As soon as our intelligence heard about it, we began frantically trying to find you, get the papers back, and save your life. And when we heard that you were going to be poisoned as part of a plan, I was assigned to protect you under all costs.”

Ben sat looking at her, mouth open. He never could have imagined, never at all, that he was involved in such high-level government business. After all, he was just _him,_ a Wall Street businessman with no ties to the government whatsoever, and never in any kind of universe would he imagine anything remotely like this happening.

“I know this is a bit of a shock,” Rey said apologetically.

“No kidding.”

“I’m sorry for…forcing this on you. When the police come, there’ll be an FBI agent with them, and he’ll take the papers from you and give them to whoever he needs to. And then hopefully, you’ll be safe again.”

Ben smiled and placed a hand on hers in comfort. “It’s okay. I know it’s not your fault.”

“Thanks for understanding. You’re a good person.”

“I’ve never been told that,” Ben said in surprise. “You’re the first.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve never done anything that important. I’m just… _me.”_

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Rey protested. “What do you like to do in your free time?”

“I like to read. I write a little, too. And sometimes, I go to the orphanage in my city and read the children books.”

“See? You brighten _their_ days.”

“But not for long.”

“It doesn’t matter. They look forward to seeing you, don’t they?”

Ben remembered how happy the orphans had looked whenever he walked in. And then, with a glowing feeling inside of him, he nodded.

“I guess so.”

Rey smiled. “You’re important, Ben Solo. And the universe is glad to have you.”

It was around that moment that paramedics dressed in white robes burst in, picked Rey up, and carried her away on a stretcher. Ben went after her, and at first they protested, but then Rey nodded and signaled that it was okay.

“He’s a friend,” she said. “He’ll be worried about me.”

“Okay,” said a paramedic who looked to be the leader. “But we’re going to have to operate on her, and I’m afraid you can’t be in the room when we do. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. As long as I’m with her.”

 

While Ben sat in the waiting room, reading a magazine and waiting for any sort of news about Rey, a man in a suit walked up to him and began rifling through his briefcase. Ben was about to protest before he remembered what Rey had told him about the papers, thinking about how this was most likely an FBI agent coming to free him from his suffering. Sure enough, the man patted him on the back and apologized, just as Rey had, for forcing him into this “horrible business” on accident.

“It’s fine,” Ben told him, just as he had Rey. “It’s not your fault.”

 

Ben cancelled every meeting that he had that day. All afternoon, and even late into the evening, he sat in that waiting room, thinking about whether or not Rey would survive.

She had told him that she had survived worse than that bullet in her stomach. But maybe she had just been saying that to comfort him, and even if she wasn’t, the paramedics had taken an extraordinarily long time to arrive. He was no expert, but he was pretty sure they were supposed to arrive sooner than that.

Worry gripped him, and suddenly he could not resist jumping up, leaving everything behind, and running through the hallways, looking for the room that contained her.

He found it quickly, and he arrived just as a paramedic was leaving. There was a somber look on her face as she carried something in her arms, and Ben tapped her on the shoulder and asked her what was wrong.

“We failed,” she whispered. “She’ll die soon. We were just leaving to tell you. Would you like to come in and…say goodbye?”

Ben nodded. “Yes. I would.”

When he walked in, Rey seemed to be the antithesis of the woman he had met just hours before at the café. She was pale and still, and her eyes were nearly closed.

“Rey,” he whispered, walking up to her. “Rey. Rey.”

His throat had closed up, and he found himself unable to say anything but her name, over and over and over again.

Already, she was too weak to say anything at all. And just the realization of that forced tears to Ben’s eyes, and he placed his head on her hand and squeezed them out.

He could still feel the beating of her pulse in her wrist. But already, it was slowing down, long spaces in between every _pump_ that signified that she was alive.

And then, there was nothing.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> War AU proposed by the-one-in-the-middle on Tumblr, this particular plot is mine!

Rey’s boyfriend was a hero.

She heard it every day, talking to friends, reading the news, making small talk with strangers on the bus. It seemed as if she had the same conversation involving his heroism at least twice a day.

“My boyfriend Ben sent me a card from abroad-”

“Ben? Like the war hero Ben Solo?”

“Yes. He _is_ the war hero Ben Solo.”

The stranger would always give her a skeptical look at this point. “You’re pullin’ my leg.”

“I’m not. I can prove it.”

She didn’t have to, she told herself every day, but she hated being called a liar, so she did anyway. Rey showed the stranger the photo album that she had of her selfies with her boyfriend, and the stranger – almost always male – marveled at them as if they were some kind of precious artifacts.

“I believe you now,” the stranger said with awe. “So, how does it feel dating a hero? Did you know that he…?”

Of _course_ Rey knew. Every time Ben and his team accomplished something new, she was the first person he called, eyes lit up with excitement. So, technically, she knew the news before anyone else.

Yes, she was proud of him. She didn’t really understand the politics behind what he was doing, though she tried, but from the conversations she had with people, she understood that he was saving lives. Over the months that he had been away, though, she had grown tired of people only talking to her about her boyfriend, bypassing any kind of conversation at all.

Ben himself didn’t fall under this umbrella. He was practically the president of the Rey Kenobi fan club, and he complimented her, overflowing with happiness, whenever she accomplished even the smallest things.

Rey loved him for it. But what she didn’t love was the strangers around her, about ninety percent of whom tended to fall into two categories: _ignoring_ her and _flirting with_ her.

To these people, if she didn’t want more than anything to avoid confrontation, Rey would have said one of two things.

She loved her boyfriend, and she loved herself.

 

One evening, as Rey was binge watching a show on Netflix to unwind from a long day at work, she got an alert from the news app on her phone. Pausing the show she was watching, she unlocked her device to check it.

After she got through the fairly short article, her heart was racing with panic.

There had been a raid on a series of camps in the war in the Middle East. Although the news website didn’t have much information yet, they knew that one of them was Ben’s.

_It is not known yet whether there are any survivors._

Frantically, Rey dialed Ben’s number. Both of them would have to face extra charges for international calling, but this was enough of an emergency that they could live.

There was no response.

“Ben,” Rey whispered aloud, reaching for her computer almost without willing it. “Ben, Ben, Ben…”

Rey booked a flight for the Middle Eastern country in which her boyfriend was stationed, ignoring the alert on the front that warned against traveling to the Middle East due to unstable political conditions.

She couldn’t wait until some news source figured out what the hell was going on. She needed answers, and she needed them now.

 

Rey followed the usual precautions that she had read about on the night before she was to leave. She dressed as conservatively as she could, which included wearing a veil over her head, and she walked with one of her close male friends, Poe Dameron, who was willing to pose as her cousin if needed.

“Where to?” he asked as soon as they were out of the airport, and they watched a cab approach them.

“His base, first of all,” said Rey. “It’ll be invaded, but we may be able to find clues as to where they went if they escaped.”

_If they managed to escape._

“Gotcha.”

The cab took them about half a mile from the base, refusing to go any further due to the Middle Eastern soldiers storming the camp. Poe took Rey’s hand, and the two looked around, eyes finally settling on a man whom Rey recognized from some of her Skype calls with Ben. He hid behind a large bush, shaking in terror, and Rey ran up to him, Poe at her heels.

“Rey!” he whisper-shouted. “What are you doing here?”

“I read about the raid on your camp in the news. I wanted to check on my boyfriend, but…are the rest of you okay, too?”

“Tim went to call for backup. The rest of ‘em are fighting ‘em off over there, and I’m on the lookout for if the enemy sends reinforcement.”

“And Ben?”

“Oh, Ben went on a quick vacation the day before this. He’s in the city now. ‘S far as I know, he’s safe and sound.”

Rey’s eyebrows furrowed. “He never told me this.”

The man – Rey had been struggling to remember his name, but now it came to her as Bob – shrugged. “Dunno. That’s what he told us. Do you want his address so you can check up on him?”

Rey nodded, and Bob scribbled it out on a piece of paper and handed it to her, along with his room number in what seemed to be a hotel.

“Thanks,” she said, patting him on the shoulder and walking back to the cab with Poe. “Good luck on your mission.”

The cab driver took the duo to the address Bob had provided, and Rey’s impressions had proved right: it _was_ a hotel. The receptionist led them to the room Bob had written down, and Rey was about to knock before she heard a loud moan come from inside.

It was unmistakably Ben’s.

“That cheating _asshole,_ ” Rey and Poe growled at the same time, letting themselves in through the thankfully unlocked door.

Ben was there, as well as another woman with long blond hair, face distorted in pleasure. Neither of them seemed to notice Rey at first, but when she cleared her throat angrily, he jumped up, staring at her in shock.

“Rey, I’m sorry,” Ben began to say.

She raised an eyebrow warily, squeezing her hands into fists.

“You were so far away, and…”

“…you were horny?” Rey finished for him. “Couldn’t even tell your _girlfriend_ that you weren’t on base so she wasn’t worried _sick_ about whether or not you were fucking _alive?”_

“Rey, I…”

“Fuck you. It’s _over._ ”

Rey stormed off, somehow barely managing to hold back the tears until she was out of the hotel, glaring at the wall as if she could somehow will it to shatter into little pieces. She knew that it was his fault and his only, but she couldn't help but wonder if he would have done this if she was... _better_ in any way at all.

“Rey, are you okay?” Poe asked, torn between trying to comfort her and leaving her alone with her grief.

She wrapped him in a hug and cried into his shoulder, unable to say anything at all.


	22. Chapter 22

"Ben, are you there?”

Ben was snapped out of his peace, relaxing on his couch and reading a book, by the sound of the knight he served calling him. She was about to go into a tourney battle, and she would need his service to fit her.

Rey Kenobi, only about five years his senior, was unlike any other knight he had ever met. His previous masters all pushed him around, used him as a target practice (he was still all scratched up from his very first one, who was fond of using him in place of the straw dummies to practice his swordsmanship), and bullied him mercilessly whenever he did even the smallest thing wrong.

Not Rey, though. Maybe it was because she was a woman, and therefore used to being treated like stray mud on someone's shoe, or maybe it was just because of how much of a good person she was, but she always seemed to treat him like an equal.

"Ben!" she called again.

And she was the only person to use his preferred name. Everyone else called him a girl and used the name that he would never say aloud ever  again.

“Coming!” he called down, true to his word practically racing down the stairs and to her.

When he came in, Rey was already tying her hair into the braid bun hairstyle that she always used to keep it out of the way. Ben picked up her armor and began putting it on her, just like he did every day, making sure not to touch her private parts.

“What took you so long?” she asked, fixing the final barrette.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I was reading a part in a good book, and I was so invested in it that I forgot.”

Rey laughed. “Well, in that case, no need to apologize at all. What book was it?”

Ben pulled it out from his belt and showed her, and she nodded in approval. “I think I’ve read that one before. It’s a good book. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me tell you, it doesn’t end at all in the way you expect.”

“Do books ever?”

“Some do. Like fairy tales. I like reading those sometimes when I’m in my room. To calm down.”

Ben never knew this about Rey. It was hard to picture her ever lying in her room and calming down, even for a moment. She was a woman who was always moving, always working on some kind of project or practicing for a tourney, not the type of person to wrap herself in a blanket and read fairy tales.

He stretched his imagination, because this was something that he wanted to see. He added some rain in the background, hammering on the roof and splattering the windows, and suddenly, all at once, the image came to him.

As Rey did a couple of last-minute warm-up exercises, he soaked himself in it. He imagined being in the room with her, sleeping against her broad chest, listening to its rise and fall, blending with the beating of her heart. It was a relaxing feeling, and just its existence made him want to walk across the room and kiss her on the lips, but Ben knew that it could never happen.

In the laws of the government and the church, he was a woman. And so was she. And he didn’t want to do that to her – force her to take him in as a concubine and keep her from pursuing the people she truly loved.

And even if he had been born as who he truly was, and the church saw him as a man, he was nothing more but a lowly servant boy. She, a knight, would gain nothing from their love.

“Good luck in the tourney, Rey,” Ben said simply.

“Thanks. Good luck with your lessons.”

“Thank you.”

That was as far as their relationship would go. And that was as far as it should have.

 

Rey won the tourney. She almost always won tourneys. And when she walked into Ben’s room with a flower in her hair that hadn’t been there before, he knew almost instantly what she was going to tell him.

“A young lord in the audience,” she gasped breathlessly, “threw this rose at me during the victory parade. And when I came to talk to him afterwards, he told me that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. I’m to meet with him tomorrow in the city.”

“Good for you,” Ben told her genuinely. “Congratulations. Is he any good, looks-wise?”

“Oh, he’s amazing. I’ll introduce him to you after we’re back from our date.”

Oh, how Ben hated that word. Date. It implied a certain finality, a determination that the woman he loved would be lost to him forever.

“That’s good. I’d love to meet him.”

 

Ben was polishing her armor, scrubbing it ten times harder than he needed to, when Rey arrived, wearing a beautiful pink dress and walking with her beau.

“Ben, this is Thomas,” she said, eyes alit with excitement. “Thomas, this is Ben, one of my best friends.”

Thomas was pleasing to the eye, Ben had to admit. He nodded at him and was about to extend his hand for a shake, but the young lord glared at him with derision.

“Disgusting servant boy,” he hissed. “You look like a girl. Are you a girl?”

“Thomas, leave him alone,” Rey snapped, but he stepped in front of her.

“I think I’ve seen you somewhere,” Thomas continued.

“I haven’t met you before, my lord,” Ben scrambled. “I apologize for any offense.”

Thomas ignored this. “Your name isn’t Ben. It’s-”

And then he said _the name._ The name that Ben had never wanted to hear again in his life, but that he was forced to hear every day, and that hurt coming from the mouth of someone who knew his real one. The very thought of Rey being in love with this man, this man who had hurt him and hated him and _said the name_ and called him a girl, just that thought, forced tears to Ben’s eyes and forced him to run.

“Thomas!” Ben heard, angrily, then “Ben!” But he paid neither of them attention.

He ran to his room, throwing books and clothes into a suitcase, barely even aware of what he was doing or even why he was doing it. It wasn’t until Rey came into his room – Ben noted that she was alone – that he stopped, instead sitting up on his bed and looking at her.

“Ben,” she said, voice barely above a whisper, sitting down next to him. “Ben, I’m sorry for Thomas’s behavior. He seemed nice while we were talking on our date, and I never thought- Ben. Why are you packing?”

“I can’t live here anymore,” Ben sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of a hand. “I just can’t. No one will ever think of me as a boy but you.”

“And they will in other places?” Rey asked, genuinely curious.

“I heard of a kingdom where they accept everyone. Where the church doesn’t matter, and those who practice it _still_ accept people like me. I’m going to live there and squire one of their knights.”

Deep inside, Ben hoped that she would offer to come along. Maybe there, he could propose to her, and they could get married, and they would be happy, alone together.

But she said nothing. Instead, she patted him on the shoulder and walked away.

“Good luck, Ben,” she called behind her. “Good luck in the new kingdom. I hope it treats you better than we have.”

“Thank you. Good luck here.”

That was the last conversation they had in both of their lives.


	23. Chapter 23

If you asked any long-time resident of the little town in the outskirts who their most beautiful woman was, everyone, with no exceptions, would say Rey Kenobi.

People who had only just come and didn’t know better would point out someone else, perhaps one of the flashier women who liked bright dresses and makeup. Some of them even pointed out the plain girls with red hair who kept to themselves, and some even said that women should not be ranked, and that every single one was beautiful in her own way.

Rey Kenobi herself agreed with this. She resented the title of “beautiful woman in town” more than she resented anything else, and she carried herself with a kind of dignity that showed that all of that was below her without being pretentious or stuck-up about it. Rey was known among women for being kind and supportive, never once bringing one of them down to push herself up, and always willing to brush their hair and lend them her clothes for dances and dates.

But everyone knew: Rey Kenobi was the most beautiful woman in town. Every man – except those who didn’t know better – desired her, and it was not uncommon for her to return from a long day picking berries in the forest to find a doorstep full of roses.

But Rey rejected them all. When one of her female friends asked why, she said simply that she wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend yet.

Which was why Ben Solo, a man who was coming into the little town to stay for the summer, almost instantly set his eyes on her.

 

Ben Solo was tall and handsome, with slicked-back black hair and dark brown eyes, and he always wore turtlenecks and jeans, except when it was absolutely too hot, in which case he would wear a muscle shirt and shorts. He had a perpetual smirk on his face that he could only tone down a little bit, but he never _once_ toned it down when he was around a woman.

Everything about him screamed “trouble.” Which was why every single woman found herself seeking him out, talking to him, flirting with him, placing her hand on his wrist and inviting him back to her home.

Every single woman except for Rey.

Ben humored them. He gave them flowers from his garden and pinned them into their hair, kissing them on the cheek, letting his hands slide down their skin, teasing them, promising more “another time.” And they were so in love that they didn’t notice him looking past them, gazing at Rey, walking past and carrying a picnic basket for a long day climbing trees in the woods.

“Hey there,” he said one day, stopping her on her way to the farmer’s market.

“Hello.”

“I’m Solo. Ben Solo.”

“I’m Rey. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“You haven’t heard of me?”

Rey gave him a strange look. “I think I’ve seen you around. My friends say you’re here for the summer. Are you having fun here?”

“I am. But it’d be a lot fun with a woman by my side. Like, say, you.”

“Oh, isn’t that splendid. Personally, my afternoon would be much better _without_ you by my side.”

Ben raised an eyebrow, widening the smirk plastered on his mouth. “Aren’t you a feisty one? Rey Kenobi, I think I like you very much.”

“The feeling is not mutual. Could you step out of the way, please? I have to go to the farmer’s market.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Do you need to buy fruits and vegetables for dinner tonight?”

“I need to buy your heart. For my life forever.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “That was the worst line I’ve ever heard in my life. You need to work on your pickup skills. Not that it’ll work on me, of course, but for other girls.”

Ben sighed. “Well, I’ll see you again later.”

“Unfortunately. Hey, before you go.”

“Yeah?”

Rey grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down to her level, as if for an incredibly angry kiss. But instead, she pressed his forehead to hers, so that neither of them saw anything but the other’s eyes.

“ _Treat my friends kindly. Or you’ll have_ me _to answer to.”_

Rey shoved him aside and went to buy her things.

 

Ben Solo kept pursuing her.

He wrote her love letters, loaded with sappy language that all of the girls in his previous towns loved. He bought bouquets of beautiful flowers that always made women swoon. He approached her every time he saw her in the street, genuinely curious about how her day had gone.

And every time, she tore up the letters to make a fire for her house. She put the flowers in a vase to brighten her home, but she didn’t put any effort in keeping them alive like she usually did with flowers she had. And when he talked to her in the street, she made small-talk, but only to the point of politeness, and every time he tried to go even an _inch_ past that, she walked away, making up a lie about shopping or being in a hurry to visit a friend or go to work.

After about two weeks or so of this business, Ben understood that Rey Kenobi was unlike any other girl he had seduced. So he tried something else.

He offered not his companionship, or even his love, but his help. He came to her whenever she looked busy and asked if she needed his help to hang that painting, or pull those weeds, or paint that fence. And not once did he show even an inch of flirting, and he didn’t even talk to her unless it was she who made the first move.

And eventually, Rey found herself falling deeper and deeper in love with him. But every time she thought about these feelings, she shut them down, disguising them as friendship, as simply falling for his constant seduction.

Rey _did_ want to be friends with Ben Solo. So one day, while he was planting the new flowers she had gotten, she invited him to climb trees with her.

“I can’t climb,” he said simply.

“Oh, that’s not a problem. I’ll teach you. It’s super fun once you get the hang of it.”

“Well, okay. I’ll come.”

He did come. Rey had a hard time teaching him how to climb a tree, how to find the branches that weren’t dry and how to pull himself up, and during the lengthy process, she found herself touching him a lot.

Almost too much.

Finally, Ben managed to make his way up a small tree without falling.

“Good job!” Rey called up, clapping. “You can jump down. I’ll catch you.”

And she did, though he fell on her and pinned her to the ground. While both of them were laughing, and he was still on top of her, she couldn’t resist wrapping her arms around him and kissing him.

He kissed her back, with passion and beauty, and it felt warm and soft, and _she_ felt happier than she had ever felt in her life. Without a single word exchanged between them, she led him to her house, where he spent the whole day and a little bit of the night.

“I’m in love with you, Rey,” Ben murmured into her back while they were almost asleep.

“I’m in love with you, too.”

 

The next morning, he was gone. Not just from her house, but from the little town. And in his place was nothing but a note.

_I finally succeeded._

_#33_


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story behind this:  
> In March, as I was preparing for this month (finalizing prompts and finishing up as many works as I could) I decided to write a prompt based on La La Land, not having seen it, with the assumption that I would watch it later.  
> This didn't happen.  
> So this is very, very loosely based on what I know about the movie, and it's not my best work, but I hope it's at least passable.

The jazz club was closed for the day, so Ben Solo, its owner, decided to take a break and go for a trip into the city of Los Angeles for a while. He had been working non-stop for the past couple of months, and it would be good for him to rest for a little while.

He walked through the city that he called home for so, so long, taking in the cool autumn air. Small towns were beautiful during this time, with their multicolored leaves lighting up the world, but big cities like his were just as beautiful – or even more so – with their lights and their broad range of people.

People came to Los Angeles from many different walks of life.  They came alone or with families, prepared or not, smart or kind or beautiful or funny or any combination, all different races or genders so sexualities, with different opinions on everything in the universe.

But all of them had one thing in common. Every single person who came to Los Angeles dreamed of something.

It was a frequent topic at one of the bars in the inner city. There was an old bartender with graying hair and failing vision who moved as if he was made of glass, and every time someone new came in and bought a drink, he asked them what they dreamed of. The answers were surprisingly open, and they were just as diverse as the dreamers themselves.

“I dream of my book being picked up by a publishing company.”

“I dream of making a movie and having it grow popular.”

“I dream of being a great musician.”

“I dream of me and my partner being accepted by society.”

“I dream of finding love.”

Ben worked at that bar for years to earn money to get by while his jazz club was failing. He heard every single dream that could possibly exist, and although he knew that a lot of them were unrealistic, he couldn’t bring himself to say it, even in the quiet of loneliness.

Because during that time, he had been a dreamer, too. And it had seemed during those years that his dreams were just as unrealistic as the drinkers’. Both the jazz club dream and the other one. The one he didn’t talk about.

One of those dreams had come true. The other one hadn’t.

 

Ben kept walking through the city. He stopped at his second favorite restaurant for lunch after a couple of hours had passed, and he bought a sandwich and ate it as he stared at the horizon, nothing but blankness on his face.

Because as he sipped his water – not lemonade, his absolute favorite drink – and ate his sandwich on flatbread – not Italian, his absolute favorite bread – he couldn’t help but think about why he wasn’t enjoying his favorite things. And his brain couldn’t help but rewind to the moment when he first met Rey Kenobi.

 

She was short and pretty in a wild way, and he first met her at a play he was watching on a weekend night off of his bar job. She wasn't in the lead role; that was an actress he had seen before but whose name he couldn't remember. She wasn't even one of the side roles.

She was in the ensemble, barely having any singing lines except when she was part of a chorus, but the way that she danced captivated him. And after the show, after Ben had gotten signatures from the main cast, he walked up to her and waved shyly.

"Hello," she said hesitantly, waving back.

"How are you?"

"I'm pretty good. The main cast is up in front."

"I already talked to them. I felt that the ensemble didn't get enough love, so I came back here."

He wouldn't, he _couldn't,_ admit how much he had fallen in love with her at first sight. So instead, he stuck to the safe topics.

"How do you like being in this show?"

"It's pretty fun. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a bartender, and I play the saxophone on the side."

He checked his watch. "I have to go now. Can I give you my number so we can talk again?"

"Of course. I'm Rey, by the way. Rey Kenobi. I don't think we properly introduced ourselves."

"I'm Ben Solo. It's lovely to meet you."

 

There was a lot left unsaid during that first meeting. But during first meetings, there are always lots of things left unsaid. And Ben found himself calling Rey more often than he should have, telling her about his life, listening to her tell him about hers.

And eventually, he began moving on to deeper topics. First of all, how much he wanted to start his own jazz club. Second of all, how lonely he was in such a big city, not having many friends or even roommates.

She agreed with that, lamenting about how sad she was that she couldn't land a big role, instead feeling stuck in the ensemble, unable to move past.

And third of all, in hushed whispers one late evening, when both of them gravitated to each other under an inability to sleep, Ben told her how much he loved her.

"Ben," Rey whispered, keeping quiet so as not to wake up her roommates. "Ben, oh, Ben..."

"You don't have to feel the same way," he said instantly. "I promise. You don't. I'm not that kind of person."

She was silent. And just as Ben was about to apologize, to hang up and say goodbye and goodnight, she whispered something again.

"I _do_. I _do_ feel the same way. Oh, Ben, we have so much to talk about..."

"I have to go to sleep now," he said, not knowing what else to.

"See you again tomorrow?"

"Of course."

 

Ben saw Rey more than he had ever seen anyone in his life. He felt like he was addicted to her, drugged on the feeling of being by her side, and even though it was a nice feeling, it terrified him, as it was something he had never experienced before.

He started skipping commitments to hang out with her, missing work commitments and hangouts with other friends and family. He knew, even though she didn't say it, that Rey missed just as many things, many of them having to do with her acting career.

After a time, he confronted her about it, and they agreed to take a break from each other. But they found themselves longing for one another, and it was around that time that both of them realized at the same time that their relationship simply _didn't work_ if they weren't together nearly always.

The thought hurt Ben. And the thought hurt Rey just as much. Both of them were in tears when they met at his favorite restaurant and ate his favorite sandwich and drank his favorite drink and broke up with each other on mutual agreement.

 

In the present, Ben clenched a hand around his bottle of water. He missed his ex-girlfriend, missed her much more than he would care to admit.

He saw her now, walking down the street, and he didn't think for a second that it was a hallucination. Because he knew that it wasn't.

Rey Kenobi was an immensely successful actress now. She had moved past her career in the ensemble a long time ago, and she was now the most coveted for every lead singing role. And he had founded his jazz club, and he often saw her in the background, laughing with friends, hanging on the arm of her new boyfriend.

They had both achieved their dreams. Just not with each other.

 

Seeing her now, Ben's mind began to rewind again, only it skimmed past the part where they first met, starting exactly at the moment where they started drifting apart.

He saw himself, telling her that they could see each other, but not as often, because he was tired of quitting his commitments just to hang out with her. He saw her, agreeing, then giving him a kiss on the cheek before breezing off to another audition. His mind skimmed through the weeks in which they had drifted apart, only now, they stayed as close together as ever, as happy and as in love, and their relationship had worked out perfectly.

He saw their wedding, then their children, and he saw her cradling one to her chest as she kissed her on the forehead and promised her that she could do anything she ever wanted to. That image was the most painful of all.

Ben checked his watch again. It was time for him to go home and handle finances. He had forgotten to do that last week, and his jazz club could be shut down if he didn't pay his taxes.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I just realized that a lot of my time periods overlap. Interpret that as you will.

_Ring, ring, ring!_

Rey's phone was going off non-stop, and she picked it up, ignoring the fact that she was in a crowded airport. She was too tired to care about many things, and how strangers thought about her was just one of them.

"Hello?" she asked, not bothering to check who it was. She could figure it out within the first couple of minutes of conversation.

"Ms. Kenobi, are you almost in Madrid?"

_Oh._ There _we go._ It was her boss, unless Finn was joking around again. _And_ if he suddenly developed a feminine, whiny, and annoying voice.

"I'll be there in a couple of hours at the very least. I'm still in Paris."

_"Still?_ That's kind of suspicious. No one should ever take that long in overlay."

"Well, tell that to the twelve hours I've been waiting here," Rey snapped, losing patience but keeping her tone as still as she could.

"Well, let me know if the situation changes. We can't spare a single person for this project."

"Of course."

_"Customers flying on flight F-2187, please report to the front desk. We have an announcement to make,"_ a booming voice sounded through the loudspeakers

"That's me," Rey said into the phone. "I have to go. See you later."

"See you later."

Rey pressed the bright red _hang up_ button and went to the front desk, where other businesspeople and families with children were already waiting, looking just as tired and frustrated as she felt.

"We have bad news for you," the cashier said. "Your flight had been delayed by a couple of days. We can't spare many planes due to technical issues."

Behind her, Rey heard a mother sigh loudly and audibly. "But my in-laws are waiting for me! I _have to_ see them!"

"On behalf of the entire company, I am very sorry," the cashier said, holding her hands up in surrender. "The airport hotels will be open for you free of charge. Feel free to explore the city while you're here."

Everyone nodded and accepted their room keys, and Rey heard the cashier whisper "I'm sorry" to everyone as she handed them over.

It was late at night, and in any other city, or for families with children, it would have been much too late to explore anything at all. But it was Paris, the City of Lights, the city of incomparable beauty.

Rey texted her boss the news, then shoved her phone and key into her purse and left the hotel. It was time to go exploring.

 

She was too tired, and it was too late, to soak in the culture of the Louvre or the catacombs, so Rey decided to simply stroll along the Seine, looking around the city. She heard music and chatter, all in a language she didn't understand but appreciated anyway. Paris truly _was_ a beautiful place to be, and perhaps this overlay was a blessing in disguise.

Somewhere along the way, Rey realized that a very non-sneaky pickpocketer was trying to steal her purse.

"Hey!" she yelled, knowing from her experience with living in London that the proper thing to do in these situations was to make as much of a ruckus as possible. "Hey, give it back. That's mine!"

The thief would not relent, and at one point, he pulled out a knife, obviously intending to cut the straps and take the money inside for himself.

_"Hey!"_

Rey kept screaming, but no one came for help. People rarely did in such big cities. She had understood a long time ago how an American woman could be murdered in broad daylight and the view of thirty people without a single one of them calling the police.

A man ran up all of a sudden, screaming something in French and batting the thief away, somewhere in the middle of a rant saying a word that sounded like "police." At the mention of the police in a language he understood, the thief relented, running away and muttering half-assed apologies.

"Are you all right?" Rey's savior asked in English.

"Yeah," she said, breathing heavily. "Thank you. I don't know what I would have done. I don't speak French."

"I can tell that. I'm guessing you're English?"

"Yep, from London. I'm on an overlay flight to Madrid, and I'm stuck here for a couple of days."

The man winced. "That sounds painful. I'm sorry. I'm Ben Solo, by the way."

"Rey Kenobi. I think I'll be going back to my hotel now. I've had enough adventure for one night."

"I can see that. Would you mind if I gave you my phone number? So I can show you around the city's most beautiful places?"

"That would be good, actually."

Ben handed Rey his phone, and she punched it in. And then - she didn't know why, except for maybe the excuse that she was tired and delirious - she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips.

He kissed her back, running his hands through her hair as he did so, not saying anything against it.

"Goodnight, Rey," he said as they parted. "See you again tomorrow."

"See you again tomorrow."

 

What followed in the next week was the fastest romance that Rey had ever had. Within two days, they were calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and they spent long days together, holding hands and walking along the city, soaking in the culture that she had wanted to soak in for so long.

He called her beautiful, and sometimes, he brought her flowers, murmuring about how much he loved delayed flights and spring and Paris and her. He showed her all of his favorite places in the city, and some of his least favorites, too, where he always kept his valuables in a small bag close to him and kept his phone on hand to dial France's emergency number.

"Why are you showing me these?" Rey asked the first time he took her to one of these slums.

"I want you to have an accurate picture of Paris, of course. And that includes places that you'd consider 'slums.'"

He kissed her every day, sometimes a kiss of passion on the lips, and sometimes a simple chaste peck on the cheek. Overall, he was the most loving boyfriend Rey ever had.

Which was why it was so heartbreaking when she went to seek him out on the day that she had to leave.

All she could think about was how much she was going to miss him, mixed with absolute happiness at the times that they had together. She planned it all out, thought about what she was going to tell him in a heartfelt speech on the last day they saw each other, and every step of the way to his house, which she knew the address of but to which they had never been together, was like a stab in her throat.

Rey knocked on the door of the small house, but instead of Ben, a woman answered.

_"Bonjour,"_ she began to say, but Rey held up a hand.

"I don't speak French, I'm sorry," she said. "Do you know English?"

The woman's mouth opened in soft shock. "I...try. Hello. What do you want?"

"I'm here to see Ben Solo."

"Oh. My boyfriend." She yelled up in French, ignoring Rey's bewilderment at her original identifier.

_He_ can't _be her boyfriend. He's_ my _boyfriend._

_Then why didn't he ever let you see his house?_ a tiny voice inside of her asked.

She would verify it all when he came down. And he did.

"Rey," he said. "This is my girlfriend Alexandrie."

"I thought _I_ was your girlfriend," Rey protested, not sure whether she was more wounded or shocked.

"I'm sorry. I-"

The French woman - Alexandrie, apparently - glared at him too, but the glare lasted for only a second, and then she burst out into a long line of what sounded like French curses and stormed out of the house. Rey was tempted to join her, but instead she looked at Ben, tears filling her eyes so much she could barely see.

"Why?" she asked in what was barely above a whisper. "Why would you do this to me?"

Ben was silent. And that was the only answer Rey needed.

She took her purse and left the house. And in just a couple of hours, she would leave Paris.

Forever.


	26. Chapter 26

When Ben Solo was a young high school student, fascinated by economics and longing to do business just like it, he had never imagined how hard it would be to actually maintain his high position in the serpentine pit of business. In the competitive world of Wall Street, there was always someone trying to screw over someone else, and even when he wasn’t explicitly making a trade deal, he needed to be on the lookout for someone trying to scam him.

Exhausting, but fun. And, of course, it made money.

So he kept going, talking to people, working to make the demand for his product – clothes – rise. And so far, he had been largely successful.

But Ben read the news. He knew everything about every other business that was on the rise, and he also knew how every other person in New York – and even, to a smaller extent, the world – would affect him. And right now, he was realizing that people weren’t talking about him.

There were talking about another up and coming business: Jakku Jewelry, whose CEO was the young Rey Kenobi.

Her business was growing and growing and growing in size. And his, though the change was not yet drastic, was slowly but surely dwindling.

Right now, Ben was in his car driving to meet her. There, he was planning to talk out some sort of collaborative advertising agreement, perhaps extend a hand of companionship along the way. He had heard good things about her behavior during meetings.

Ben walked into the building, showing the doorman his ID as he did so. As he stepped into the elevator – he was alone – he had high hopes for how this would play out.

 

From the first glance, Ben was wary of Rey Kenobi.

Usually, when he walked in for meetings, the other person would be sitting down. Not Rey. She was standing up, eyes blazing with a strange fire, as if at any moment, she could jump onto the table and scream about revolution. She walked up to him and held out her hand, and when he shook it, her handshake was one of the firmest he had ever had in his life.

“I’m guessing you’re Ben Solo?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Lovely to meet you. I’m Rey Kenobi. I’m so happy to finally be meeting you. I’ve heard good things about you.”

Ben smiled hesitantly, still standing, as he didn’t want to be intrusive by sitting down without permission. Finally, she realized that she had forgotten something and pulled out a chair.

“Sit down. I’d love to chat with you.”

“Thank you. By the way, I’d like to congratulate you. Your business is a fairly new one, but you’re so high up anyway. I wasn’t able to rise to the kind of prominence that you have for _months._ ”

Rey laughed. “I don’t know why I’ve suddenly grown so popular, if we’re being honest with each other. I’m pretty sure I’ve been using the normal advertising strategies. Haven’t been doing anything ‘special.’”

“Well,” Ben conceded, “women love jewelry. And so do men. And word of mouth spreads quickly. I bought one of your watches for my mother, by the way, and she _loves_ it.”

“Oh!” Rey’s eyes lit up. “I’m wearing one of your pantsuits right now. The quality is _amazing._ Really helps me during long work days. More so than any of my other clothes.”

Ben smiled. “Thank you. So, the reason that I came here was first of all to meet you, and second of all to propose that our businesses do some sort of a…joint advertising campaign. I’m an old business with moderate success, and you’re a new one with _extremely_ great success, so I think it’d be beneficial for both of us if we collaborated. You know, showed the public that we were friends.”

Two birds with one stone. An extension of a friendly hand, from one CEO to another, and the start of a business deal. At this point, there was no reason whatsoever for her to refuse.

But she did.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Solo,” she said, genuine sadness in her eyes. “But I can’t accept your offer. Not yet, anyway. I don’t know you.”

“But you know my business,” he protested. “I’m not saying that we should be friends forever or anything. I’m just proposing a simple collaborative advertising campaign.”

It seemed as if there was something that Rey was going to say other than the simple refusal. But in the end, all she did was shake her head and apologize again.

“Maybe when we get to know each other more. But not right now. I don’t want to do anything with an unfamiliar business right now.”

Ben wanted to protest again, but then he realized that it would probably not be in his best interests. So instead, he nodded, picked up his briefcase, and moved to leave.

“I hope to talk to you again,” he said as his hand rested on the doorknob, not twisting it.

“So do I. This meeting was rather enjoyable.”

_Maybe for her. But not for me._

 

Rey hadn’t outright refused him, Ben thought as he went back to his office. She had merely said that she didn’t want to do business with someone she didn’t know very well.

So instead of exploding over her company in anger, as a younger him may have done, he took a deep breath, pulled out his figures, and began to work, thinking along the way about how he might begin a relationship with her company.

He wrote things praising her on social media. He encouraged people, his employees and others, to buy her products, supporting her business even further. Occasionally, in his video ads, the actors would wear some sort of Jakku Jewelry product, so even though it wasn’t paid, it was there, and it was clear from the subtle placement that Ben felt no ill will towards his unofficial rival.

He practically put as much effort into advertising Rey’s business as he did in advertising his own. But while her business didn’t need it at all – by now, Jakku Jewelry had integrated into the vocabulary of both Americans, right there with popular TV shows and makeup brands – his own was needing it more and more and more. His stocks were declining by the minute, and it seemed that nothing at all that he did could stop it.

And still, Rey did nothing at all, and Ben realized that the only way for his business to be saved was through her.

One day, she invited him to her office again, and Ben accepted, slightly wary, wondering what exactly the purpose of this was. She had already told him that she didn’t want to collaborate with him unless she knew him well, and at this point, she didn’t. At all.

“Hello,” he said, walking up into her office, fiddling with his pockets to hide his nervousness.

“Hello, Mr. Solo. It’s lovely to see you again.”

“May I ask why you requested to see me?”

Rey smiled. “You may. I wanted to ask you why you’ve become so obsessed with my company and business since our last meeting. I’ve been seeing more promotions for Jakku in your advertising than I’ve seen for your actual company.”

“I’ve been advertising them equally,” Ben explained. “Or at least trying to. I’ve been trying to get to know you better so we could collaborate.”

Rey flinched suddenly, as if she had been slapped. “If you wanted to get to know me better, you should have simply called or e-mailed me to schedule more meetings. We could have scheduled trade deals or something along those lines. But this…this is a creepy obsession, and I’d like it to stop. Please just leave me alone. Okay?”

Ben’s hands squeezed into fists, and he shook now not with nervousness, but with anger that he could barely contain.

“I have been nowhere _near_ obsessed with you,” he snapped, sounding harsher than he had intended. “I’ve been trying to establish friendly relations. You’d set the boundaries far, far away from you, farther than they are usually set in business, and I was trying my hardest not to overstep them.

“I’ve been doing this for _months,_ by the way. If you’d been uncomfortable, you could have told me so earlier via call or e-mail, instead of forcing me to drive out this far just for you to chew me out. Do you realize that I need every second for my business? Have you seen how much the stocks are going down? Have you seen how much my business is being ruined?”

He stopped himself before he escalated into yelling. He honestly wasn’t in the mood to yell at her, and he had already gone far enough with his anger.

Rey was silent for a long time, staring down at her feet. And then she nodded.

“Fine. I apologize. Is that what you want? An apology for not accepting a business offer? An apology for not trusting someone I’ve never done business with before? Wall Street is full of scammers, Mr. Solo. I would think that _you,_ of all people, would know that.”

Ben winced at the cutting insult. He remembered how he had once been scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars through a trade deal. Judging by her age, and how publically it had been spread through the media, she would have been just entering business school when she heard about it.

And that comment was just enough to tip him over the edge.

A younger, more energetic Ben Solo would have flung himself on her, screaming and yelling and hitting, and he would have been arrested for assault. But an older Ben Solo knew how to manage his emotions properly.

“Fine,” he said simply, though the undertone of anger in his voice was obvious. “Fine. I don’t need your help, anyway. I have to go.”

“Go,” she responded, moving to her window. “Go. Go, and don’t come back. I need your help even less than you need mine.”

 

After a couple of months, and several entering clothing businesses that were obviously superior to his "shit quality" - that was what consumers had been saying lately -  it was obvious that Ben was losing money by continuing his business. So after talking to his employees, writing stellar reviews for his managers for other professions, and spending a whole night shamefully sobbing into his pillow, he shut it down.

This was impossible to recover from. He couldn’t start another business from scratch, like some businesspeople did after a huge failure. He barely even had money to keep himself going every day.

So instead, he waited tables at his local restaurant, saving enough money to move out of New York City, perhaps even out of the country. There, he would join someone else’s business, start small once again, work his way up to supervisor, then manager, then maybe even CEO.

Ben would never start anything of his own again. He couldn’t handle that shame.

And still, Rey Kenobi rose, and with her, so did Jakku Jewelry. Ben wasn’t sure how he felt about that. And he was even _less_ sure how he felt about her e-mail to him.

 _Mr. Solo,_ it read.

_I am incredibly sorry at the misunderstanding there is between us. It is as just my fault as it is yours, and it is unfair to both of us that I blamed only you. If I had offered you help, and if you had taken it, your wonderful clothing chain would still be in business._

_If you would like to restart it, or start another business, I will help you more than happily. And if you find that the business life is not for you – personally, if I were in your situation, I would – you will always be welcome in a job at my company, even in a non-New York City Branch if you so desire._

_From my few interactions with you, you seem like a good person, and I will always be more than happy to help you. Please respond as soon as you can._

_Yours truly, Rey Kenobi_

Below that was a list of qualifications and phone numbers that Ben couldn’t bother to look through.

When he had gotten the e-mail, during a rare break from his job, when he sat on his couch and browsed through his computer, trying to relax from the absolutely frustrating shitshow that was his boss and co-workers, he had looked at it in shock and disbelief.

 _Rey Kenobi_ was trying to help him? _Rey Kenobi,_ who had seemed to hate him, and against whom he was wary at best? _Rey Kenobi,_ who had refused to help him at all in the past, was trying to help him?

It couldn’t be real. And for a couple of days, Ben thought long and hard about her offer, putting off replying to it as long as possible.

On one hand, it would be a job that would make him happy, and it would certainly be more enjoyable than asshole co-workers, his judgmental manager, and creepy drunk women trying to flirt with him. He would get paid more, too, according to statistics he looked up while doing research, and he certainly needed the money if he was going to continue his dream of traveling the world.

On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine an insult to his pride worse than this one. He, who had previously been so successful in life and money, would be working under his former business rival.

And what if she came to his branch specifically during those traditional visits? It would be so painful to talk to her, to speak to her as if she was his superior and not his equal.

Painful and insulting. And he couldn’t imagine it at all.

But if he accepted her offer and worked under her, Ben would finally fulfill his dream of getting to know Rey Kenobi better. He would allow himself a glimpse into her business mind, a more mysterious one than he had ever encountered, and perhaps he would learn her secrets and dare to start over again. Maybe he would even try his hand again at business, and maybe this time, it would be successful.

Or maybe they could even be co-owners of Jakku Jewelry. And that, of course, would make them friends.

Or more. Ben didn’t know it yet, not fully, but something deep inside him desired more.

Eventually, his pride won out. And he sent her an e-mail back late at night in bed on his phone, telling her politely but firmly that he would refuse her offer, and that he wished her the best of luck in her business’s future.

After a day, she replied, one last time.

_Good luck to you, too._


	27. Chapter 27

_Swing left_. _Swing up top. Swing down the bottom. Keep hitting blindly, aiming for the vital areas._

Princess Rey Kenobi was in her training yard, wearing her older brother’s clothes, fighting a practice dummy with a sword she had taken from the armory. Everything that she was using felt uncomfortable and awkward, but she would have to manage. She wasn’t allowed to get anything of her own anyway.

Yes, it was frustrating that people undermined her abilities just because she was a girl. But during her lifetime, she had already gotten used to it.

A man walked up behind her, but he did not do anything. Instead, he watched her motions silently, smile crossing his face. Suddenly, he spoke up.

“You’re using your wrist too much. You have to use your whole arm while you’re fighting.”

Rey looked over, about to be angry, but then she realized who it was and smiled back.

“Oh, hi, Ben. Didn’t see you there. How was your tourney yesterday? I’m sorry I couldn’t attend. Royal business.”

“It was good. I got to the final four.”

Rey held up a hand, and Sir Ben Solo slapped it.

“Good job,” she said approvingly.

“Anyway, would you like to spar with me? I brought some practice swords for you.”

He threw one at her, and she caught it by the hilt in midair and stepped into position. They sparred for a couple of minutes, Rey making sure to take all of Ben’s suggestions, until she managed to pin him to the ground and look him in the eye.

“Good job,” he wheezed as she let him go. “You’ve been making progress since I started training you.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. I practice every day.”

“I can tell.” He turned around and kissed her back, this time full on the lips, running his hand through her hair.

“Would you like to dine with me? In the gardens? I packed sandwiches for a picnic with a friend, but he cancelled last minute. Knight business.”

Rey nodded. “Let me just run real quick and tell the cook not to make me lunch.”

She did so, but before she did, she sneaked into her room and changed into a dress, putting her brother’s clothes back into his room where she found them. If she was asked what she did all afternoon, she would say that she made progress on her sewing.

And she  _certainly_ wouldn’t say that she was romantically involved with Ben Solo. More than anything, she wanted to avoid the consequences that little truth would entail.

 

Rey’s family, as it turned out, was already planning on sending her and her brother, Elwin, away for lunch. Apparently, there was some kind of royal meeting, and neither of them were old enough to participate in business. So when Elwin heard that Rey was enjoying lunch with the royal knight Ben Solo, he excitedly wanted to participate.

Rey so rarely had time alone with Ben that she didn’t want to invite him along. But she had no choice.

Elwin, Ben, and Rey sat at a table, eating sandwiches in awkward silence. Finally, Elwin realized that he had to make conversation.

“So, Sir Ben. How has the knightly business been going?”

“Very well, thank you for asking,” Ben replied politely, though Rey could see the wariness on his face. “I had a tourney recently, and I got into the final four. I lost to Sir Finn. Do you know him?”

Elwin shook his head, but Rey spoke up. “Oh, I think I saw him at a royal gathering. He seemed-”

“I don’t know him,” Elwin interrupted. “What is he like?”

Ben launched into a description of Sir Finn as a fighter, and Rey could tell that Elwin understood none of it, but she, from her training, understood every word. Just as he was describing a strategy that she knew was a solid one, she spoke up.

“That seems like a good idea,” she said. “How’d it-”

“I don’t think that’s a good strategy. It’s a wonder he won.”

Ben gave him a look of reproach. “Actually, your sister is right. It  _is_ a good strategy. You see…”

Rey looked at him with gratitude. Her brother always interrupted her, either because she was younger or because she was a girl or both, and she absolutely despised it. It was rare to see him get called out, even subtly.

Elwin, on the other hand, was angry. After the lunch period was over, and Ben had to bid the royal siblings goodbye, he pulled her aside and glared at her, baring his teeth slightly.

“Why did you know so much about sword strategies?” he snapped.

“I don’t know anything at all,” she replied smoothly. “I just thought it would be a good idea, that’s all. And I said so.”

Elwin grabbed her by the collar of her dress and pulled her into him. “Well, then, why the hell were you speaking over me during our meeting with Sir Solo?”

Rey shoved him aside to free herself and put up a defensive stance, ready to fight him if the need arose. “ _You_  were the one who was speaking over  _me,_ dear brother. Don’t you remember? Always interrupting me…”

“Men should always speak over women,” Elwin hissed, and Rey saw his hands squeeze into fists. But she had stopped being afraid of him a long time ago.

“Oh? And why is that so?”

“Because men are superior, of course. Didn’t you ever learn?”

“And why are men superior? Because they’re stumbling, angry brutes who walk around pretending that they’re better than everyone else? Because they go to war and kill each other for no reason while women stay at home, tending to the house, keeping the peace?”

Elwin opened his mouth, but Rey glared at him so fiercely that he stayed silent.

“And you try to shut women down for no reason other than your supposed ‘superiority,’ and honestly, it’s frustrating. Have you ever considered that women might have their own opinions? And that those opinions might even be better than men’s?”

Rey gasped for air. She had never gotten that angry in front of her brother, and it proved to be an exhausting feat.

Elwin stayed silent for a couple more seconds, gathering his words, figuring out what he wanted to say. And then, he spoke.

“My clothes were dirty when I hadn’t worn them for weeks.” His voice sounded like a snake’s, hissing and biting, and his face looked just as serpentine. “Do you know why that might be, dear sister?”

“No,” she said simply.

_I am not afraid of him. I am not afraid of him._

“I don’t know. Not at all.”

“Well, I do. And unless you apologize  _right now,_ and promise never to interrupt or contradict me, I’m telling Mother and Father. And they’ll deal with you just like they want to.”

_Not afraid. Not afraid. Not-_

Rey imagined what her parents might do if they knew that she was taking lessons in sword fighting – or, worse, if they knew that she was in love with Ben Solo. And for a second, for a split second, she considered doing as he told her to.

But then, she remembered what she had been yelling about just a minute or so before. She was  _tired,_ sick and  _tired,_ of always trying to appease him, and for that matter men in general. And every bone inside of her told her to refuse.

So she did.

“I don’t regret anything I said,” she snapped into his face. “So eat my fucking shit, Elwin. And the next time you try to tell me what to do for any reason, you’re getting a punch in the face. I’m  _sick and tired_ of you always trying to pretend that you’re better than me.”

Elwin smiled. “I thought you’d say that. I hope you’re excited for what Mother and Father say your punishment will be.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Well, you should be.”

“Well, I’m not.”

Rey walked back into the castle and into her room, dress gathering dust behind her, but she didn’t pick its fabric up until she was climbing the stairs. She didn’t want to give her brother another thing to complain about.

Truth be told, she was terrified of what her parents would do if they chose to believe him, which they probably would, given that he was their favorite. But her fear was far eclipsed by her satisfaction, and by the time she got into her room and began work on her cross-stitching, it had completely faded away.

 

Weeks passed with no news, and Rey eventually forgot about the fight she had had with her brother. It wasn’t until her parents called her into their chambers that it came back to her in a flash, and her heart pumped so fast that she ran, pulling up her dress so that she didn’t trip over it.

By the time she walked in and took a seat, she was struggling to hide her panting.

“Rey,” the king said. “We have news for you.”

“Is it good news or bad news?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

The queen laughed. “It’s  _very_ good news. At least, that’s what we think. We’ve arranged a marriage for you.”

Rey’s heart instantly sank into her legs, and she clenched her shaking fist around her dress to keep herself from crying. “Do I know my future husband?”

“I don’t think you do. But he and his family are coming over to the castle next week. So you’ll be able to meet him then. Rey, darling, are you all right? You look like you’re going to be sick. Go to the bathroom if you need to.”

Rey shook her head. “I don’t need to. I’m just nervous. What if he turns out to be a bad person?”

“Oh, he won’t. I’ve met this boy on diplomatic missions, and he’s quite lovely. And if he turns out not to be, then come to me. The final decision is yours, of course. After all, it’s  _you_ he’s marrying, and not us.”

Rey was surprised by this kind of reaction from her parents. They had never even shown a  _hint_ of giving her any kind of choice over her body and marriage. And for a second, she thought about telling them the truth about who she was in love with. Maybe, just maybe, they would let her marry Ben Solo and let Elwin make a marriage alliance.

So she did.

“I’m in love with someone else,” she confessed, “and have been for a long time.”

“Oh?” the king asked. “May I ask who he is? And why you didn’t tell us about him?”

“I didn’t tell you about him because I thought you would yell at me and not let me see him anymore. You always seemed like you wouldn’t let me make my own decisions about who I loved.”

“We  _were_ like that once,” the queen confessed. “But then, your brother told us about how he had seen you practice sword fighting with the knight Ben Solo. And then, I realized that I loved you more than I loved our society’s gender roles, and I realized that you would be so much happier if we let you make your own decisions. You can tell us whom you love. Don’t worry, sweetheart.”

Rey took a deep breath. “I love the knight Ben Solo.”

Her parents were silent, but the lines of their faces were not angry, and Rey understood that they loved her even now. And then, they stepped towards her and enveloped her in a hug.

“Rey, I’m so sorry,” the queen murmured in her ear, and Rey could feel wet tears on her cheek, though they were not her own.

“Why are you sorry?” she asked, heart resuming its quickened beating.

“We were arranging marriages for knights last weekend. And Ben Solo was one of the men whose hand we promised.”

Rey was too shocked to scream or cry. She could do nothing but ask, “To whom?”

“A princess from a neighboring kingdom,” the king whispered, squeezing her tightly. “Oh, Rey, if only we had known..."

"If I'd told you sooner..." she began, but she trailed off, unable to find the answer that she was looking for.

The queen pressed her lips before speaking.

"We would have been angry at you at first, I think," she confessed. "But then, we would have had the realization that you were happy, and we loved you, so we would have come to our senses."

At this, Rey burst out into convulsive sobs. She didn't stop shaking for another couple of hours.

 

On the day after the realization, Rey went to Ben's; they had both sent letters to each other saying that they had something to say. So they met in the gardens, entirely alone, both with somber looks on their pale faces.

Ben took Rey's hand with both of this. "A marriage has been arranged for me. I was informed today."

"Me, too," Rey whispered. And then she told him what her parents had told her, about how if she had told them sooner, they would have accepted her eventually.

Ben did not yell at her. Not once during their relationship had he ever yelled at her. And she loved him for it.

Instead he nodded and leaned forward to press his forehead against hers.

"I will always love you," he whispered softly. "Always. No matter what. I may love my betrothed too - I haven't met her yet, so I don't know - but I will always love you."

"And I you," Rey whispered back. And in that moment, the tears came again, pouring out of her like rain during a storm. Ben kissed them, each and every single one of them, not paying attention to his own tears at all.

"I love you," he whispered between every kiss. Neither of them could say it enough.

Rey heard footsteps behind her, and when she turned around, she realized that they belonged to Elwin. At this, after a piercing glare at her brother, she finally faced the man she loved more than she loved anyone, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the lips, long and slow.

"Rey, the others are here," Elwin said, and there was an undertone of protest in his voice, but thankfully, he said nothing.

Rey was thankful. She didn't want to fight him. At least not now.

"Rey," Elwin called again, and Rey released the kiss to say, "I'm coming."

And then, she kissed him again, longer and slower than the last, touching him in every place she could.

One last time.


	28. Chapter 28

Ben was sitting in his room and fiddling with a pen while staring at a sheet of parchment that had been blank for hours. Just before he had left his history lesson that day, fantasizing about how much he was going to immediately play outside with some of the servants' children, the tutor had ordered him to write a five-page paper on the history of the kingdom, due tomorrow.

The kingdom's history was wide and expansive, as his parents loved to tell him, and they would love nothing more than for him to remember it and always be interested in learning as much as he could. But Ben himself was always eager to get out of lessons, instead leaning towards more practical pursuits, such as science or mathematics. And right now, the kingdom's history was so wide and expansive that he had no idea where to even begin.

Technically, with his power as the son of a lord, Ben could have ordered the assignment to be cancelled. He had actually tried that when he was a little younger, smug smirk on his face as he thought that he had the tutor beat. But then his father walked in, overturned the ruling, and firmly told Ben never to do that again.

So now, the young lord's son was stuck, and bored out of his mind to boot. Just as he was considering not turning the assignment in, and therefore getting a bad grade and probably also a report to his parents, they both walked in and sat on his bed.

"Making any progress?" the lord's wife and Ben's mother, Lady Leia Solo, asked him.

Ben shook his head. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s so frustrating that he gave this to me completely out of the blue.”

“Start at the beginning,” Lord Han Solo suggested.

“Well, duh, but…”

Lady Solo smiled. “Anyway, pretty soon, you won’t even have to do any schoolwork. I’m sure you’ll be happy about that.”

Ben tilted a head in confusion. He wasn’t going to finish with his official lessons for another year or two, and there was no reason for his parents to terminate them, unless…

“We’ve arranged a marriage for you,” Lady Solo continued.

Ben’s eyes lit up. He had known that this would happen – after all, he was the only Solo heir, and he needed a wife to produce children to carry on his family legacy. But still, after everything he had heard about the beauty of marriage, it was a rather exciting event to be close to experiencing it for himself.

“Who with?” he asked his parents.

“Princess Rey Kenobi. We’ve spoken with King Alexander and Queen Daisy, and they’ve decided that they need our alliance more than anything. And of course, we’d benefit very much from an alliance with the royal family.”

“We would,” Ben agreed, though his mind was already drifting far, far away, more specifically to the time when he and his parents visited the royal family on a diplomatic mission. He recalled with picture-perfect clarity his initial politeness when approaching the princess, just a little bit before the two had almost instantly started arguing over practically nothing.

Everything in the universe was working together for them to be enemies. And soon, they were to be husband and wife.

Ben wanted to protest, to get down on his knees and beg his parents to pair him off with someone else. But first of all, he knew they wouldn’t listen, and second of all, he knew how much his family needed the alliance. And family, no matter what, came first.

“Very well. When can I meet with my betrothed?”

“They’ll be coming over tomorrow, actually. We’ll be talking about a dowry and planning the wedding, and the two of you can talk about whatever you want to. They’ll be at our manor for a week.”

Ben nodded and smiled. “Thank you for telling me this. I’ll be sure to leave a good impression.

Lord Solo laughed. “I hope so.”

They talked to him about a husband’s duty, and in the meantime, Ben worked on his essay. Normally, this would be considered rude, but he and his family already established that he could multitask perfectly, so they had no problem with him doing his homework while they told him something important.

It wasn’t until midnight that Ben finally had the required five pages. And then, he put away his things, hopped into bed, and tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep.

 

The next morning, true to his parents’ word, the royal family arrived at the Solo manor. Princess Rey was with them, brown hair done in a bun atop her head, and she wore a pink dress with a ribbon tied around the middle. She looked like a child’s doll, but if she liked it, Ben wasn’t one to police how she chose to dress herself.

After the official introductions had already been completed, Ben led Rey to his gardens, where they sat on a bench together.

“Listen,” he said before she had the chance to start a fight. “I’m really sad that our very first interaction ended with an argument. And I don’t want that to happen again. Especially since we’re apparently going to get married. So…let’s not do that, all right?”

Rey nodded. “Let’s try to stray away from anything too controversial for now, all right? I mean, we’re trying to pick ourselves up from a ruined relationship, and…”

“Of course. So, how was your trip here?”  _No way will that start anything._

“Pretty good. We stopped by a small restaurant in your capital on our way here for lunch. I think it was called Winnego’s. Do you know that one?”

Ben’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s my favorite one to go to! Sometimes, if I have a lot of free time and a little bit of extra money, I like to take my friends and go there for lunch. It’s _so_ delicious! You had their sandwiches, right?”

Rey grinned. “I  _loved_ their sandwiches. We _must_ go there together. Maybe after our wedding?”

“Rey, I don’t think I’d  _ever_  agree to marry you if you didn’t agree to go to Winnego’s after our wedding. Maybe take a group of my friends so you can meet them…”

Just as Ben was fantasizing about this picture-perfect scenario, Rey frowned seriously. “It depends on who your friends are. If they’re nobles, like us, then I’ll take them. But if they’re bums off of the street, or filthy servants, then I don’t want them with us.  _Or_ at our wedding.”

At this, Ben’s hands clenched into fists.

“They’re servants,” he snapped frustratedly, “but they’re  _not_ filthy. You need to stop stereotyping all servants as gross. My friends are  _wonderful_ and  _beautiful people._ ”

“I’m not trying to deny that,” Rey said, holding her hands up. “I’m just saying that I’m worried about what my parents will think. That’s all. Please don’t yell at me over nothing.”

Ben thought about this for a second. It was true that her parents were probably strict about this sort of thing, but it  _wasn’t_ necessarily true that they had passed this on to her daughter. Maybe she was being honest when she said that she was only worried about their reaction.

But he had seen her lip curl up, even if it was ever-so-slightly, when she said the word  _bums_ or  _filthy servants._ And he had had so many experiences with nobles insulting his friends that he wasn’t going to take any chances.

“It’s  _not_ nothing!” he yelled, face scrunching up into anger. “These are my  _friends!_ I don’t _care_ what your parents think! I’m bringing them to our wedding no matter what, and there’s  _nothing_ you can do about it!”

“Stop it already!” Rey yelled back, clenching her hands into fists. “Stop trying to start crap when there’s none to start! I  _never said_ that your servant friends were bad! In fact, I completely support the new economic plan my father wrote, which-”

Ben’s eyes blazed with a fire as he leaned into her face. “This new economic plan does nothing more than screw the commoners over even more. God, Rey, don’t you understand the people’s struggles at all? Or do you just sit there on your throne all day, not paying attention to what’s going on around you?”

“You’re acting like you’re not privileged, too,” Rey hissed.

“I am. I admit it. But I actually  _listen_ to the commoners and their opinions instead of just assuming that I know what’s best for them.”

_“I never said that! God, Ben, do you even listen to me, or are you just looking for an excuse to fight?”_

“Well-”

Ben took a breath before beginning what he was going to say next. And in that breath, he realized that he was exploding completely irrationally.

“Rey, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have exploded like that. I…I apologize.”

“Fuck off,” she snapped, walking back into the castle, not even turning around to look at him.

 

During the next week, Ben apologized three times a day. Multiplied by seven, that was twenty-one apologies. And considering Rey’s reaction to him whenever he even opened his mouth, that was twenty-one refusals.

Ben understood that he had been at fault during their garden discussion. But he had already admitted that, and she was dragging it on for no apparent reason except mere pettiness.

So during their wedding, they both said their vows with complete blankness on their faces and in their voices, none of the impossible love that Ben had imagined when he imagined their wedding even showing the  _hint_ of appearing. And when they consummated their marriage in the stillness of Ben’s room, their love making had the same exact tone of impersonality.

“Rey,” Ben said the next morning, reaching out yet another hand of apology and friendship. And this time, she didn’t seem angry at all. Instead, a soft smile crossed her face. And this time, Ben hoped that everything would turn out okay.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she said back, sounding somewhat awkward. “I’m sorry for ignoring you the last week. That was immature of me.”

“It’s all right. I understand. I’d probably do the same in your place. Did you enjoy the wedding?”

Ben had brought his servant friends along despite his in-laws’ protests, and they had behaved themselves well, following the etiquette rules that Ben had given them a crash course in down to a T. It seemed as if the debate was over.

“I did, very much,” she said softly, standing up and getting dressed. There was nothing but fragility between them now, and neither of them wanted to do or say anything that could shatter the perfect mood. “Did you?”

“I did as well. I’m glad to be your husband. I’d love for you to have my children.”

“So you only see me as a means by which you can have your little heirs?” Rey snapped suddenly, whirling around to glare at him.

“Of course not!” Ben exclaimed, putting his hands up. “I mean, of course, that’s a factor in it, but-”

“Then why did you say  _my_ children, not _our?”_

“Because they’ll be Solos. And I’m a natural-born Solo, so they’ll be more mine than yours.”

Rey leaned into his face, baring her teeth angrily. “ _I’ll_ be the one who has to carry them in my stomach for nine months at a time.  _I’ll_ be the one who has to go through _impossible_ pain to give birth to them.  _I’ll_ be the one who will love them, who will feed them, who will take care of them while you go off to war or do your lordly duties or whatever it is men do during the day while women stay home and keep house. So no, _Lord_ _Solo,_ I think that they’ll be just as mine as they are yours.”

“So you’re a feminist?” Ben asked genuinely.

“Of  _course_ I’m a feminist. I take it you’re not?”

“Not really. I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it before.”

“Well, why don’t you take the time and think about it? And in the meantime, figure out what’s up with your superiority complex and your swollen ego. Because I don’t especially want to be around that.”

With that, she walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

"Rey!" Ben called behind her, standing up to follow her. "Rey, I'm sorry!"

But she showed no sign of turning around or even listening to him. It was no use at all even trying.

 

During the very first period after their wedding, Rey and Ben Solo seemed to fight practically every day. Just when it seemed like everything was going perfectly, the smallest thing would trigger the smallest argument, and because of both parties' stubbornness and eventual unwillingness to admit that they were in the wrong, it would snowball into something huge. Eventually, it seemed to Ben that they spent more time not on speaking terms than actually talking to each other.

Ben had heard so much about honeymoon periods, about how couples were madly in love with each other during the first couple of months of their relationship. And what saddened him the most was that he and Rey would never experience anything like that.

Both of them tried multiple times to make amends. But none of it worked.

 

Years passed like this, and still, their marriage was a loveless one. Neither of them had any affairs - no matter how bad things got, Ben couldn't bring himself to cross that moral line - but sometimes, he felt tempted.

He looked at other people who had married the people they loved, then at the couples whose marriage started as an arranged one but then morphed into one of genuine love. And in every second that he and Rey were happy with each other, something deep inside of him whispered that maybe, their relationship would turn out just like that.

But it never did. And it never would.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y a l l d v e

The stolen car drove at an impossible speed down the highway, far over the speed limit even there, swerving dangerously to avoid hitting anyone. All of the windows were firmly closed but the sunroof, through which a young woman’s head was poking out, occasionally ducking down to report to the car’s driver.

“I think we lost them,” she said at one point. “Don’t see them at all. Keep driving just in case, and then we can stop by a hotel or something and rest.”

“We sure need it,” the driver joked, one hand briefly leaving the steering wheel and waving softly in the air.

“I know, right? That was probably the best theft we’ve ever done. Wait. There’s a better word than theft, but I don’t remember it right now. Anyway, you kept the money, right?”

“’Course I did. Check the backseat if you don’t believe me. I’d _never_ leave it behind. It’s probably the second most important thing in my life.”

Rey Kenobi ducked down again and leaned forward, hand resting on the dashboard to prop herself up. “And what’s the first?”

Ben Solo smirked. “Oh, you’re just fishing for compliments, aren’t you?”

“You started it,” Rey protested, though the lines of a joke were still evident on her face.

“But you’re continuing it. I thought you were going to check if the money was there?”

“You still haven’t answered my question. What’s the first most important thing in your life?”

Ben rolled his eyes and laughed before leaning forward and kissing his lover on the nose. “You. What else could it possibly be?”

“I don’t know. The money. Or this car. It’s gotten us out of a lot of messes before. Including this one.”

“Right you are. The car is the second, now that I think about it. I’ll make money the third. You, then the car, then money. Sound like a good arrangement, nugget?”

“Yep. Sounds good. Speaking of arrangements, are we still heading to Dameron’s house?”

“Of course we’re still heading to Dameron’s house. Dameron is probably the best supporter we have. Him and Skywalker. Skywalker’ll be there too, if I remember correctly.”

“I hope you _do_ remember correctly. This next heist – there it is! That’s the word I was forgetting!”

“Good job,” Ben said approvingly.

“Anyway, this next heist is s’posed to be even harder than this one. And you know we barely managed to make it out with our skins out of this one.”

“Mm-hmm. I already knew we needed Finn and Poe, Rey. You don’t need to remind me.”

“Well, I am, anyway. But right now, I’m probably going to sleep. Wake me up if anything happens.”

Ben gave Rey another forehead kiss. “Sleep well, nugget.”

 

Rey was shaken awake when the car pulled up to a nearby hotel. She and Ben, each carrying two suitcases in their arms, walked up to the reception desk, apologizing profusely for not having reservations.

The receptionist was very understanding, and she was more than willing to give them a room with a single king-size bed, but she explained that she would have to charge extra for not having a reservation. This the two understood, and just as they were about to take their key and move up to their room, another worker came in – a bellhop, by the looks of it, dragging suitcases behind him, though he instantly dropped them and pointed an accusatory finger.

“Cathy!” he yelled at the receptionist lady. “That’s Kenobi and Solo! They’re escaping from the police after a heist! They’re wanted for grand theft larceny!”

The bellhop ran up to the desk, grabbed the phone, and began calling the police. Meanwhile, Rey joined Cathy the receptionist in defending her innocence.

“Leave them alone!” Cathy was shouting.

“We’re not Kenobi and Solo!” Rey protested. “We have ID right here. I’m Natasha Smith, and that’s my husband Adam. Please, sir, don’t call the police. We’re not who you think we are.”

“Fake ID,” the bellhop snapped dismissively, tapping his foot and waiting for the police to pick up. Upon further inspection, Cathy nodded and took the key back, then, with surprising reflexes, took Ben’s car keys from his pocket.

“You won’t be driving away any time soon,” she said with a smirk. “And don’t even _think_ of trying to run. I’ve got my car parked right outside. We’ll catch you in _minutes._ ”

Ben looked at Rey with panic, both of them struggling to think of what they should do. He gestured at the ceiling with his eyes, and Rey tilted her head in confusion. At this, he pointed directly up, then mimed climbing down and running into the streets, where they would have a bit of head start as Cathy got into her car and took a couple of minutes trying to find them.

It was a reckless move, but it was the only one reasonably available to them. But just as they were about to sprint away, three people came in: two men and a woman. Rey recognized the two men as Finn Skywalker and Poe Dameron, but she didn’t remember ever seeing the woman.

“What’s all this?” Finn asked. “We just want to rent a room. Could you do that?”

“These two are wanted criminals. We’re calling the police on them. We’ll help you in just a moment.”

“Wanted criminals?” the woman asked, tilting her head. “I don’t recognize them. Surely they’d be on the news if they’re _that_ important?”

“They look like Kenobi and Solo,” Finn suddenly burst out, face lighting up in realization. “A little bit. If you tilt your head. Maybe that’s what they mean?”

Poe had been hanging back, Rey realized, probably pretending not to hear as he handled the luggage. Suddenly, he ran up to her and wrapped her in a tight hug.

“Oh, sweet sister!” he practically squealed in her ear. “Nat, I haven’t seen you in _years._ I _never_ thought I’d find you here.”

“Oscar!” Rey burst out, catching on, squeezing him even tighter into her.

“Accomplices?” Cathy whispered to the bellhop.

“Don’t recognize them,” he whispered back.

Poe released Rey, still holding her hand. “We’re not renting a room tonight, ma’am. I’ll be spending the night with my sister and her husband. Oh, Nat, we have _so much_ to catch up on…”

Without batting an eye, he led her outside and to their car, Ben and the woman following behind them. Rey guessed that Finn was convincing Cathy to give him the keys back.

She was right, she learned after a couple of seconds, during which he was holding them up into the air and jangling them victoriously. Immediately after he hugged the couple, he gave them an angry look.

“Y’all’d’ve been arrested if we hadn’t come, do you realize that?” he snapped. “Don’t you know not to check in to hotels when you’re on the run?”

Ben was about to snap, but Rey stepped in front of him and looked at Finn with a smile. “We’re sorry. We were tired after our grand heist, and we wanted to rest properly. We weren’t really thinking. Thank you for helping us.”

Finn stepped forward and hugged her again. “I can’t stay mad at you, Rey. I was going to, but I _can’t._ This is Jess Pava, by the way. She’ll be helping us. I can completely attest to the fact that she’s trustworthy, so don’t worry about that. Jess, this is Rey Kenobi and Ben Solo.”

Rey held out her hand, and Jess shook it, wide smile on her face. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Okay,” Ben interrupted, “we need to go over the game plan. Do y’all want to meet up somewhere private to discuss it? Rey and I can take my car, and you can take yours.”

“We can go to Poe’s house, like we were planning to. It’s fairly private there,” Jess offered.

“Sounds like a plan,” the others said in various forms. After one final goodbye, they separated once more, and Rey hopped into the front passenger seat while Ben sat in the driver’s. As soon as the others drove away, and therefore Rey and Ben could, too, they burst out into giggles at the same time.

“We almost got arrested,” Ben gasped. “We almost got arrested. But then those three saved us.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Rey added just as he turned a corner. Suddenly, her voice turned somber.

“I would have gotten separated from you. You realize that, right? They have men’s prisons, and they have women’s prisons, and if we’d gotten arrested, we would have gone to separate ones.”

Ben gasped. “I didn’t even think about that. Let’s not get arrested, okay? I’d rather stay with you.”

He rested his hand on the stick shift, and Rey leaned down and kissed it.

“I never want to get separated from you. Never, ever, ever.”

“Ever.”

 

At Poe’s house, they ate sandwiches while watching an old movie and drinking lemonade. They had already gone over the plan for the next day’s heist more times than they could count, and neither of them wanted to do anything that took a great amount of brainpower. This particular movie was a comedy, and all five found pleasure in watching it and laughing their asses off at the repeated ridiculous antics of the characters.

When it was already late in the evening, the group pulled out sleeping bags and slept on the floor, heads touching so that it was easy to find comfort during the night if any of them needed it. By this point, they were already so close that there was no shame in admitting that nightly comfort was needed.

“Good night,” Finn said aloud, just before he drifted off to sleep.

“Good night, Finn,” everyone said.

About half an hour later, just before everyone was either asleep or almost there, Poe spoke aloud.

“Do you guys think fish have feelings?”

“Oh my God, Poe,” Jess snapped, suddenly fully awake, hitting him in the face with a pillow that she stole from Rey. “I don’t know. Go to sleep already.”

“But what if they do? And every time we pull a fish from the ocean, it was someone’s fish buddy or something, and they-”

Jess pressed the pillow down onto his forehead, purposely trying not to suffocate him. “Poe, I’m going to give you one last chance to shut up. And then I’m kicking you out.”

“Of my own home?”

“Of your own home. Good night.”

“Good night,” Ben mumbled.

And at this, the quintet finally, legitimately fell asleep.

 

The next morning, Finn and Poe prepared eggs and bacon for breakfast, and the rest of the group downed them at record speed. They had an impossible amount of pent up energy for their newest adventure, and none of them could wait to use it up. As they ate, Ben insisted on going over the plan again, but the rest of the group quickly shut him down.

“We know it already,” Finn protested.

And they did.

First, Finn and Jess would walk into the bank, innocently acting like they wanted to put some money into their account. As the woman led them to the empty vault, however, the other three would be waiting, and they would throw her inside and lock the door behind her. Then, avoiding suspicion, they would sneak around and get as much dough as they wanted, and after making an epic escape through a back door, they would drive off, split it five ways, and then separate again.

It was quite a daunting plan, especially since this particular bank was rumored to have one of the best securities in the entire country. But it was not very different from what the group had experienced before, and as such, any nervousness that they might have felt faded away in the car on the way there.

It was time to initiate the plan. Rey, Ben, and Poe clapped their two companions on the back and watched them leave, then immediately drove the car around the building and sneakily parked the car elsewhere. The trio stepped out, Poe clutching the keys in his pocket with a death grip. Rey, seeing this, wrapped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed it tightly.

“It’ll be okay, Poe,” she whispered, other hand tight around Ben’s, which was already shaking. “I promise. It’ll be okay. You too, Ben. I promise.”

Both of them leaned their heads on hers in an obvious attempt to lean on her shoulder. Rey giggled.

“I’m too short for that. When we make it out of this, I’m going to buy heels just so you fellas can lean on my shoulder during these kinds of things.”

“I’ll buy heels just for you, Rey,” Ben joked. “But don’t wear them during these kinds of things, please. That’ll make it harder to get away. Wear them when we’re, say, at a club. Women wear heels at clubs, right?”

“I think so- Wait. People dance at clubs, right?”

“Yeah. Usually.”

“Then no. It takes talent to dance in heels, and I don’t have it. Maybe at a dinner party?”

“Sounds like a plan. I know a few rich friends,” Poe added. “Ben’s parents, for example. You can wear heels to meet them.”

Rey nodded, and it was at this point that the team had gotten to the back exit where they were supposed to be. Ben opened it, ready to step in with his team…

…and was greeted by the barrel of a policeman’s gun.

“Kenobi and Solo,” he said, smirk on his face. “And an accomplice. Coming to rob the bank, now are you? Bet you thought it would be easy to outsmart one of the best security systems in the country?”

Ben held up a hand and was about to plead his case, but the policeman cocked the barrel of his gun and shot him straight through the head without saying another word.

“That’s police brutality,” Poe protested, obviously just as shocked as Rey was, too shocked to feel any sort of emotion.

The policeman was silent. He took the gun and aimed it right at Rey’s head.

And then, after a deafening sound, everything went black.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing canon-era fic usually gives me anxiety. That's why I try not to do it. But this ending couldn't work unless it was CE, so I watched a YouTube video with every single Kylo Ren scene in The Force Awakens.

“The girl I’ve heard so much about.”

Kylo Ren had finally found the scavenger girl. He had, in fact, been hearing about her for what felt like days, finding her at the center of the “awakening of the Force” he had been experiencing. And now, finally, he had found her.

She was young, and judging by her face when he deflected her blasts and then froze her into silence, she was _terrified._ Somewhere deep inside of him, he felt guilt for using her like this.

But then he shook his head. That was Ben Solo, fighting for freedom and forcing himself out. Kylo Ren would never allow such weakness.

“The droid,” he threatened, swinging his lightsaber into her face in a sudden fit of anger. “Where is it?”

Still, she was silent, and Kylo found himself admiring her bravery in the face of fear. Yes, it was frustrating, and yes, he would have to put in extra effort to find Luke Skywalker…but it was admirable.

Kylo reached inside of him, pulling on all of the powers of the Force, and held out a hand, forcing himself into her mind, ignoring the look of pain on her face. She looked as if she were about to cry, but she was resisting his efforts with every single ounce of her strength.

“The map,” he exclaimed with sudden surprise. “You’ve seen it.”

He was right there. _Right there._ If only he could reach a little farther…

“Sir, Resistance fighters! We need more troops!”

Kylo rolled his eyes beneath his mask, ducking out of the girl’s mind and walking towards the source of the noise, which turned out to be a Stormtrooper whose ID he didn’t know.

“Pull the division out,” he called without a second’s hesitation. “Forget the droid. We have what we need.”

With only a single gesture, the girl closed her eyes and fell into his arms. He picked her up, surprised by his own gentleness, and began carrying her back to the base.

 

As soon as Kylo arrived back to Starkiller Base, he put the girl – Rey, based on what he had gleaned from her head – into the restraining rig of his private chambers. Then, he waited patiently, trying not to look at her, as she came to, looking disoriented and confused.

“Where am I?” she asked hesitantly, looking at him with wariness.

Kylo hesitated before responding with, “You’re my guest.”

“Where are the others?”

There was no hesitation with her, only fear.

“You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?”

Kylo was trying to make her feel angry, pull towards the dark side of the Force, but she did nothing but stare at him.

“You’ll be relieved to hear that I have no idea.”

Rey looked down, still wary, and Kylo continued the interrogation.

“You still want to kill me.”

At this, the girl broke from her wariness and switched to sudden anger. “That happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”

Kylo didn’t know what prompted him to do it. But in a sudden, fluid motion, he unclipped the mask and set it down, staring at her now with nothing but his true face. Rey looked stunned – her eyes widened ever so slightly – but instantly, her face froze into stillness, making it clear to him that he wouldn’t pull the information from her just like that.

Kylo walked up to her, and their faces were only a few feet apart. “Tell me about the droid.”

Rey hesitated before speaking again. “He’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator-”

Kylo interrupted her, frustrated but not showing it. “He’s carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you.”

He hesitated, still not believing it, thinking about what exactly to say next. “You. A scavenger.”

At this, the girl jumped back suddenly, and her face had fear written on it.

“You know I can take whatever I want?”

And he could. Kylo was trained by Supreme Leader Snoke, one of the most powerful Dark Side wielders of the Force. Even if she didn’t realize it, he was ten times more powerful than her.

He held out a hand, almost touching it to her face, ignoring how she flinched away from him as he pulled the information from her mind. She was resisting again, forcing him away.

“You’re so lonely…so afraid to leave…”

Tears were streaming down her face, tears of fear and exhaustion, and he smiled slightly as he kept probing into her.

“At night, desperate to sleep…you imagine an ocean. I see it – I see the island…”

 _Luke’s_ island. What else could it be?

“And Han Solo,” he continued. “You feel like he’s the father you never had. He would’ve disappointed you.”

For a moment, Kylo let his guard down; his mind flashed back to his childhood, how he had felt that pull away from the Force that he was being trained in, and then how-

“Get out of my head,” Rey snapped fiercely, forcing Kylo out of his daydream. He leaned closer, thinking, continuing his probe into her.

“I know you’ve seen the map. It’s in there. And now you’ll give it to me.”

She jumped forward, teeth bared, and Kylo felt a certain kind of connection between them, one that he would never be able to explain to anyone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said to her. “I feel it too.”

“I’m not giving you anything,” she said, though her voice was already weak.

He smiled softly. “We’ll see.”

Kylo looked into her eyes – a certain kind of soft brown, though they were hardened by the resistance that she was meeting him with. He kept pushing, but he could feel her pushing back, forcing him out of her head, and then-

The dynamics were reversed. _She_ was inside of _him_ now, leaning into his hand with her face fiercely, bursting out with a strange kind of determination. Her voice no longer had the exhaustion that her face had been showing, and there was the obvious air of anger radiating off of her.

“You,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “You’re afraid…that you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader!”

Kylo jumped back, startled, feeling a mix of exhaustion and confusion and sudden terror. Rey was gasping for air, though the fierceness in her eyes was nothing like what he was feeling.

He moved to leave. He would never be able to force anything out of her right now.

 

When Kylo Ren came back from his meeting with Snoke, during which neither he nor Hux were able to understand how the girl had overpowered him, he was ready to try again. But when he came into the room, he saw that she was gone.

 _Gone._ Somehow, she had managed to outsmart even the best of his Stormtrooper guards to escape. Overtaken with rage, he pulled out his lightsaber, blade drawn, and began smashing the computer systems, thinking about nothing but the act itself.

 _Escaped._ First she had pushed into his mind, revealed his deepest secret, and now she had _escaped._ Maybe she was stronger than he had first made her out to be.

 

The snow was burning cold on his bare hands and even through his robes. Back home, back when he was Ben Solo, his mother would probably scold him for going out without dressing himself properly. And then his father would walk in, delighted smirk on his face, and tell her not to be so uptight, then hold out his hand for a bump. Ben would bump back, giggling, and his mother would whack him on the ear, though there would be no malice in her action. And everyone would be together, and everyone would be happy.

That was before everything had started to fall apart. That was before his parents started fighting, not seeing each other or even Luke as much anymore, and when he started feeling that pull to the darkness, one that a young Padawan could in no way escape, they weren’t there.

Not even Luke was there. Not even the other Jedi in training. Ben Solo was all alone, staring into the face of an inescapable darkness. And then, he had become Kylo Ren, and no one had been able to stop it.

Kylo felt it sometimes. That pull toward the light, the one that made him want, more than anything, to come back home. He felt it in his mother and father, holding hands, Princess Leia’s head on Han Solo’s shoulder, smiling as they took him into his arms. He wanted to belong again, to fit in, to be truly satisfied with whatever it was he had.

But that was a sign of weakness, according to the Supreme Leader Snoke. And ever since the entire world had left him alone to fight a losing battle, Snoke – and, by extension, the Dark Side – was the voice of authority on everything.

So he had killed his father, and he had felt absolutely no remorse about it, masking it under his anger and his adrenaline and his evil. And then, he had fought a young scavenger girl, aiming to capture her again, and he had lost.

She could barely use the Force. She barely even knew what a lightsaber was. And here she was, fighting him, defeating him in a way that no one had defeated him before.

He had offered to teach her. But he could see now that she required none of it.

Kylo knew that he should feel anger. He had _thought_ that he would feel anger. And indeed, somewhere deep inside of him, he was feeling anger.

But instead, he felt… _sad._ He didn’t quite understand why.

His body hurt, not only because of the cold. His stomach had been pierced by Chewbacca’s bowcaster, and his face was burning because of Rey’s lightsaber. He would have a scar later.

But none of that was important at all. He felt _weakened_ by the mysterious connection they had, the intense feeling that they would meet again, the determination of the thought that he should be prepared to lose.

And underneath it all, there was a mysterious feeling of hope.

_Hope? What is there to hope for?_

Kylo had thought that he would hope for victory, for the ability to capture her again and bring her to his base and extract the information from her, for real this time. But she was so strong that that hope was only fleeting.

He hoped for something else, something that he couldn’t understand, at least not yet. Maybe someday he would.

Or maybe he already did, and he just didn’t realize it yet. Maybe he had buried it deep inside of him, beneath tens of thousands of layers of hatred and anger and Dark Side, right there with Ben Solo. Maybe Ben Solo was clutching that hope to his chest, squeezing tightly, using it to force his way out. Maybe that hope was what would finally force Kylo to come back to the light.

Come back to his mother. As far as he knew, she was still alive somewhere, and even if she had lost hope along with Kylo Ren, Ben Solo was there, pushing as hard as he could.

And the scavenger girl. Rey. Kylo wasn’t going to fool himself into thinking that she didn’t want to kill him. And of course, she only knew him as he was beneath the mask, and never would she want him to come back home. But neither of them could deny that they had connected somehow, and that that connection was impossibly inexplicable, and, of course, that they would meet again.

Kylo thought about this. But he thought about it only subconsciously, and after only a couple of minutes of thinking, he immediately pushed it all away. He would keep pushing it away for a long, long time.

A ship buzzed overhead, and Kylo looked at it weakly and recognized it as one belonging to the First Order, probably coming to save him. Sure enough, when it landed, General Hux came out, handful of Stormtroopers flanking him.

“Did she defeat you again?” Hux asked him, holding out a hand for him to take it.

Kylo used it to pull himself up, legs still shaking. “She did. But I promise, it will never happen again.”

But it would, and both of them knew it. She would defeat him over and over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, thanks so much for this! This was quite a wild ride, and I'm grateful that you accompanied me. I love you all <3


End file.
